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"So this was the shape the story had taken. You may say, the shape the gods had given it. [...] That much of the truth they had dropped into someone's mind, in a dream, or an oracle, or however they do such things. That much; and wiped clean out the very meaning, the pith, the central knot of the whole tale. [...] And I saw in a moment how the false story would grow and spread and be told all over the earth; and I wondered how many of the other sacred stories are just such twisted falsities as this."
Orual, Till We Have Faces

A Sub-Trope of External Retcon, in which somebody takes a known — often classic — story, and retells it, turning it on its head. What you thought was the villain is now taken as a protagonist, and is portrayed with a greater degree of sympathy. The heroes of the story as best known might not come across so well in this telling.

Usually, the villain is presented as a smart, insightful, dedicated but tragically flawed character who may lack the charisma, empathy or social standing required to get support from other people and society in general, while the heroes are too naive, shortsighted or selfish to see the ultimate consequences of their "heroic" deeds. They may mean well, but as they say about the road to hell...

The complete inversion/reinterpretation (where the villain is the real hero and vice versa) is rarer, but in both cases, the impact of the story derives from the fact that we know who's supposed to be good and who's supposed to be bad, and this story upsets this. This is not the same as original stories on the extreme end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, where everything is morally ambiguous and no characters can be said to be good or bad per se; here the writer is deliberately playing with our expectations.

Can overlap with Grimmification, but it doesn't have to be a fairy tale, and Grimmification doesn't always feature a hero-villain flip. Doing this to a whole cosmology can lead to Satan Is Good.

Expect a story like this to be Darker and Edgier in proportion to the original's simplicity as well as elements of deconstruction which kinda helps the whole story be told. Do keep in mind the possibility of an Unreliable Narrator, if this is done from the first person POV. Compare (and/or contrast) with "Rashomon"-Style, Villain Episode, Sympathetic P.O.V., Humans Are Cthulhu, Lower-Deck Episode, Monster Adventurers, Another Side, Another Story, P.O.V. Sequel, and Adaptational Sympathy. Contrast Adaptational Protagonist, when either non-antagonists acquire the main lead role. May appear in Ron the Death Eater fanworks.

May contain spoilers, both for the Perspective Flipped and original versions of a story. Not to be confused with Perspective Reversal.


Example subpages:

Other examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Ankoku Kishi Monogatari, the protagonist view comes from the side of Demon King Modes and his army. The primary antagonists are the Hero Party summoned by "The god of Wisdom" Rena. In order to survive the one-sided armed invasion, he summons Kuroki as his champion.
  • The coming of the Antichrist is part of the Berserk lore and apparently the Antichrist is Guts and Femto/Griffith is a Messianic Archetype. Wait, something's wrong here. Considering God Is Evil in this universe, the reason for this should be obvious.
  • Code Geass features a Well-Intentioned Extremist Chessmaster with average mech piloting skills as its protagonist, leading La RĂ©sistance. His primary foe is a Wide-Eyed Idealist Ace Pilot working for The Empire. This is basically what happens when you tell a Gundam story from the Char Clone's point of view.
  • In an actual Gundam example, the manga Iron Mustang is a story for the point of view of a handful of Mooks who only appeared in a single episode of the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV series.
  • Other than the obvious changes made to fit with the setting, Gankutsuou retells The Count of Monte Cristo from mostly the perspective of Albert, the son of one of the men who screwed Edmond Dantes over, giving us a fresh perspective on the Count's Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into a Girl is mostly shown from Mido's perspective. An extra chapter in the volume one collection retells the beginning from the perspective of Mido's childhood friend, Hiura, allowing readers to see what was going through Hiura's mind as he became a Wholesome Crossdresser.
  • The Snow White chapter in Kaori Yuki's Ludwig Revolution manga still considers the evil queen an increasingly insane Fury, but she starts out quite human, especially compared to the manipulative, unexcused, insolent evil of Snow White (who's entirely responsible for her mother slowly losing it, really.)
  • Moriarty the Patriot makes Moriarty of Sherlock Holmes infamy the main character and protagonist.
  • Later chapters of Negima! Magister Negi Magi become this, showing Primum and then Tertium during and after Ala Rubra's battle with Cosmo Entelecheia.
  • Naoki Urasawa's Pluto, a perspective flip of Astro Boy's Strongest Robot on Earth from the POV of Gesicht, whose role was comparatively minor in the original story. As in in the original story, Gesicht is killed so Atom becomes the POV character.
  • Episode 5 of Symphogear focuses on the Nehushtan Armor, named Chris, who was already established as an antagonist in the previous two episodes. Her life is constantly ruined by her Yandere superior, who tortures her on an Elfen Lied scale. Failing the last mission resulted in an extended electrified torture.
  • The manga Tales of the Abyss: Asch the Bloody covers the events of the game/anime from the perspective of the psycho ranger who becomes the main party's Aloof Ally.
  • Yatterman Night. The Doronbo are usually the quirky villains to the Yattermen in previous iterations. In this series, their descendants are the main protagonists with the Yattermen descendants being the antagonists. Special mention goes to making Tonzura and Boyaky's counterparts co-protagonists with Leopard when they were originally just Doronjo's lackeys.
  • Teppu is structured like your average shounen martial arts series, except told from the perspective of the cold, cynical Jerkass Blood Knight villain. The protagonist's Arch-Enemy is naturally the kindhearted, energetic Genki Girl who believes in The Power of Friendship.
  • Tokyo Marble Chocolate is build around this: The story consists of 2 OVAs each tells the story from the point of view of one of the protagonists, one is a Lovable Coward guy and the other a Cute Clumsy Girl who are trying to sort out the problems in their relationship, and it shows for example how the problems the guy goes through trying to prove his love to the girl are interpreted by her as him being driven away from her because of her quirkiness.
  • In one chapter of the The Saga of Tanya the Evil manga, it shows the Franc Republic finally having a glimpse of the infamous Devil of the Rhine, Tanya, herself. Unlike how in the previous episode which shows Tanya's insane rant against the Republic, the orb instead shows the Jeanne d'ArchĂ©type personality that Tanya develops the more she prays to Being X.
  • The manga Otomari Honey is a non-villain-hero flip example — it takes the plot of a typical Harem Genre story and shows us the events unfolding from the perspective of a haremette who joins the harem sometime after three other girls have started living with her crush.
  • Shining Tears X Wind does this with Souma, the protagonist of the anime, being just a major character in the video game adaptation, Shining Wind where Kiriya is the protagonist.
  • The bulk of each chapter of Omujo Omutsu Joshi is focused on male lead Shouta, with the last two to four pages showing events from the viewpoint of the girl he interacted with most that chapter, usually Ichigo. The formula gets played with some after the harem expands with Morei and Muni. Shouta spends chapter 10 with Muni, but the flip focuses on Ichigo working up the nerve to ask him to the movies. Chapter 11 starts from Ichigo's perspective, then flips to Morei. Chapter 14 starts with Shouta, then Ichigo, then Morei.
  • Pocket Monsters Emerald Challenge!! Battle Frontier is one on PokĂ©mon Emerald's Battle Frontier. The protagonist, Enta, is an Apprentice while the games' lead, Rald, is his "master".
  • The most popular manga adaptation of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair tells the story from Nagito’s perspective instead of Hajime’s. There are two other manga that tell the story from the perspectives of Chiaki and Kazuichi.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel - Northern War is set on the country of North Ambria just after the events of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II but before Cold Steel III. The anime depicts the citizens of North Ambria bracing for the attack of the empire of Erebonia with its most powerful enemy being the protagonist of the Cold Steel games, Rean Schwarzer and his Divine Knight Valimar.

    Comic Books 
  • Will Eisner's Fagin the Jew is a comic book retelling of Oliver Twist which details Fagin's tragic spiral from idealistic young lad to jaded prisoner about to be hanged. Eisner's intent was to counteract the anti-Jew bias in the original tale by presenting Fagin as a person whose idealism is slowly beaten out of him by an increasingly unfair life, hence justifying the crimes and wrongs Fagin does in the original story.
  • Eisner also did one in "The Appeal" (a short story that can be found in The Will Eisner Reader) for The Trial by Franz Kafka. In it, the main character of The Trial puts a judge on trial for getting him killed in a fairly Kafkaesque fashion, right down to the potentially symbolic meanings.
  • The mini-series Lex Luthor: Man of Steel shows The DC Universe from Lex Luthor's perspective as he sees it (or at least would like us to see it); an ordinary (if, of course, you discount little things like the billions of dollars and scientific genius) human standing up against a cold, distant and otherworldly superpowered alien, whose very existence belittles and demeans human accomplishment.
  • Subverted a bit in Scooby-Doo #135, which has a perspective flip on "A Clue For Scooby-Doo"'s fake monsters of the day, Captain Cutler, and his villainous wife, without giving a good reason for their crimes.
  • Tales of the Sinestro Corps offers some backstory and alternate takes on events in the Sinestro Corps War from the point of view of the corps.
  • One of the plotlines in Transformers: More than Meets the Eye involves a group of Decepticon foot-soldiers trying to make their way back to the Cybertron. Through their perspective we're given a look into the Decepticon hierarchy, culture, and general beliefs. To highlight the Grey-and-Grey Morality of the war, at one point Krok casually refers to Megatron as the hero and Optimus Prime as the villain.
  • The Superior Foes of Spider-Man is basically a superhero comic from the perspective of the normal, street-level bank-robbing supervillains like Shocker and Boomerang. They spend most of their time just looking for work, bickering amongst each other, hanging out like normal people, and trying to avoid getting arrested by any passing superheroes. The heroes are generally perceived as stuck-up jerks by the villains, and bad guys who reform and become heroes are viewed as quislings with a target on their backs.
  • Being a long Take That! to 300, Three makes Sparta the big villain of the story.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • The Amazons' origin usually contains a perspective flip of Heracles/Hercules' Ninth Labor in which the Amazons are the good guys, but the details have varied over the years.
      • The Origin of Wonder Woman: After his defeat at Hippolyta's hands, Hercules and his men launched a suprise attack during the feast and stole the queen's golden girdle which ensured the Amazons could not be defeated so long as their queen wore it and put the Amazon's in chains. Aphrodite heard Hippolyta's prayer and broke her chains, and the Amazons then went about freeing themselves and reclaiming the girdle before Aphrodite gave them Paradise Island and ordered them to never allow themselves to be subjugated by men again lest they lose their paradise.
      • Wonder Woman (1987): Heracles and his men betrayed the Amazons' trust after entering Themyscira as a friend and seducing their queen by drugging and enslaving them. While a sect of the Amazons went a little kill crazy after escaping, Heracles and his men raped and made sex slaves of them so their reaction is quite sympathetic to a modern audience.
    • Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons: The story presents the tale of the Amazons from their perspective, putting forth the idea that the legends of the Amazons were written from the biased perspective of their enemies.
    • Wonder Woman: Black and Gold: "Feet of Clay" is a look at Diana's creation and early years from her aunt Antiope.
  • One Star Wars comic portrayed the life of the stormtrooper Leia shoots very early on in A New Hope, right up until his death. It by and large presented him as a stolid Punch-Clock Villain who was Just Following Orders.
  • Astro City:
    • "The Tarnished Angel" shows the Honor Guard from the outside. Since Steeljack's a former criminal screwed over by poor decisions and lousy circumstances now trying to do right, Honor Guard's skepticism come across as arrogant, bullying and elitist.
    • "The Menace From Earth" and "Enemy of the State" shows a rescue mission by the First Family on an alien planet from the viewpoint of an alien child.

    Comic Strips 

    Films — Animation 
  • Hoodwinked! is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood in which the wolf is an investigative journalist. Stalking Red through the woods? All he's doing is conducting some investigative work. Dressing up as Granny and hiding in her bed? Trying to get information out of Red. But Granny tied up in the closet? Now that was just one huge coincidence. Really, he had no idea she was there. (As it turns out, he's telling the truth.)
  • The Lion King 1 Âœ is The Lion King (1994) as told from Timon and Pumbaa's perspective (especially Timon's). If you think of The Lion King as Hamlet with lions, this makes 1 1/2 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
  • It's completely unintentional, but Disney's Animated Adaptation of Sleeping Beauty comes across as a Perspective Flip of the original tale from the point-of-view of the Three Good Fairies who must save the sleeping beauty and her prince from an evil witch.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Enchanted pokes fun at this.
    Giselle: I remember this one time, when the poor wolf was being chased by Little Red Riding Hood around his grandmother's house, and she had an axe... oh, and if Pip hadn't been walking by to help I don't know what would've happened!
    Morgan: I don't really remember that version.
    Giselle: Well, that's because Red tells it a little differently.
  • Wholly Moses! starring Dudley Moore. The story of Herschel, Moses' brother-in-law.
  • Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. The former tells the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the American soldiers attacking it and raising the flag, the latter from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers defending it.
  • The Others (2001) is a Perspective Flip on the classic ghost story, in which ghosts who don't realize they're dead perceive the arrival of living people in their home as a haunting by unseen, frightening presences.
  • Tucker & Dale vs. Evil tells the story of two well-meaning country bumpkins who save a girl from drowning, and inadvertently convince her friends that they've kidnapped her to do unspeakable things to her (as per the Hillbilly Horrors genre.) Of course, it doesn't help matters that said friends are all Too Dumb to Live, getting themselves killed one by one in ways they can then blame on T&D. Amusingly, the DVD extras include a flip of the flip, entitled Tucker and Dale ARE Evil.
  • Dracula (2006) from 2006, told from Arthur Holmwood's POV. Unusual for this trope, Holmwood also suffers from Adaptational Villainy (he is responsible for bringing Dracula to England), though his motives remain sympathetic (he has syphilis and wants to find a cure)
  • Oz the Great and Powerful is the story of The Wizard of Oz (the character, not the work), though he's still a jerk and a con man even before becoming the Wizard.
  • Disney Live-Action Remakes:
  • One common theme of the ESPN 30 for 30 films is to document a great sports upset from the perspective of the loser.
  • The French film He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not spends its first half following AngĂ©lique, a young art student having an affair with a married cardiologist named LoĂŻc. The perspective later flips to LoĂŻc, and we learn that AngĂ©lique is an obsessive psychotic stalker and LoĂŻc doesn't even know who she is.
  • Alien: Covenant: There's a pretty cool 3D tie-in video that shows the scene where a Neomorph rapidly grows inside a human host before bursting out and attacking another human in the vicinity from its own perspective.
  • Rogue One shows the Rebellion against the Empire not from the perspective of Jedi Knights or the first trilogy's iconic heroes but from that of the regular rebels who die by the dozens during the war. Besides showing that the rebels aren't perfect (many, including Saw Gerrera's rebels at the crew of the Rogue One itself, have to do dirty deeds for a good cause), it's particularly notable for undoing Darth Vader's Villain Decay over the years caused by the prequels by reestablishing him as an unstoppable wave of death and destruction against rebels who only have blasters on their side.
  • Rosaline is Romeo and Juliet from the perspective of Romeo's first love, Rosaline, as she tries to break apart Romeo and Juliet's developing relationship.
  • Tragedy Girls is a Slasher Movie told from the perspective of the killers as they plan and carry out their murder spree. The relationship between its Villain Protagonists Sadie and McKayla specifically calls to mind that of the villains from Scream (1996), Billy Loomis and Stu Macher, in the sense of them being a Big Bad Duumvirate with a Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic and Homoerotic Subtext between them, complete with numerous shots directly homaging that film.
  • Wasting Away is the start of a Zombie Apocalypse told from the perspective of the zombies. The zombie protagonists, who still perceive themselves as human and can talk to each other, believe they ingested a Super-Soldier serum (which explains their durability), and see everyone else moving quickly. Things like their hair and skin falling off and hunger for brains are explained away as side effects.
  • Beetlejuice is a Haunted House story told from the ghosts' point of view, in which they're trying to get the obnoxious humans out of their house and hire the titular "bio-exorcist" to help them do it.
  • Milady (2004) is The Three Musketeers told from the point of view of Milady de Winter, who thus becomes a Villain Protagonist.
  • Ophelia tells the story of Hamlet from Ophelia's perspective, though it also changes some of the plot elements as well as adding a few new plot threads and characters. It also explores Gertrude's perspective, though to a much lesser degree.
  • An infamous Brazilian parent murder got two sister movies, each based on one testimony heard in the trial, The Girl Who Killed Her Parents (from the boyfriend who along with his brother executed the parents) and The Boy Who Killed My Parents (from the Self-Made Orphan herself).
  • Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, a 1972 British thriller, allegorical to Hansel and Gretel... albeit with a kindly philanthropic widow and a manipulative sociopathic child. Only fully cements itself at the film's conclusion. Prepare to be enraged.

    Music 
  • A rare non-narrative example: Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville was intended as a song-by-song reply to the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St...
  • Blind Guardian seems fond of this trope, for example "Mordred's Song".
  • Demons & Wizards has "Winter of Souls", which is from Mordred's POV; "Crimson King," which is from the Crimson King's POV; "Terror Train" from Blaine the Mono's POV; and "The Whistler" from the Pied Piper's POV. Though, despite the title, "Crimson King" focuses more on Flagg.
  • There was a famous Venezuelan song, "Viajando en el bus" ("Traveling by bus"), where the singer tells the tale of a long bus travel he did, during which he engaged in a conversation with the hot girl in the next seat; the conversation soon turns seductive, with the girl practically trowing at him, until four of his kids and their mom (his ex-wife) board the same bus and bust all the things he said to her. Some years later another singer released a reply song to the same melody, "La chica del bus" (The girl from the bus), from the perspective of the girl; she accuses the man of being ever more misleading than what he admitted, mishearing whatever she said to him, and showing herself as the true victim of his seductive actions.
  • Frankee's "F.U.R.B." is an "Answer Song" to Eamon's "F—- it (I Don't Want You Back)".
  • The album Strange Little Girls by Tori Amos features this trope. She does covers of songs and flips the view to that of the girl. An example would be Eminem's "97' Bonnie and Clyde" song, which she redid from the mother's POV—by only slightly changing the lyrics and adding creepy background music.
  • In 1984, rap group U.T.F.O. released a song about a girl who ignored their advances called "Roxanne, Roxanne." This song was soon followed by "Roxanne's Revenge," an answer song by seminal female rapper Roxanne ShantĂ© told from the female's point of view. This song spawned a well-known answer song by The Real Roxanne, not to mention a slew of other lesser known tracks from artists posing as Roxanne's brothers, sister and even parents, each one telling their "side" of the story.
    • U.T.F.O. and Roxanne ShantĂ© later went on tour together, rap battling each other based on these songs.
  • Taylor Swift wrote Enchanted about meeting a guy at a party. Owl City did a cover of that song, revealing that he was the one for whom she wrote the song. Except, of course, the cover was Flipped. He did a really nice job, too.
  • The song "Little Red Riding Hood" by Sam The Sham And The Pharoahs not only shows the tale from the perspective of the wolf, but also reveals that he only wants to love and protect her.
    Little Red Riding Hood,
    I'd like to hold you if I could.
    But you might think I'm a big bad wolf, so I won't.
    What a big heart I have,
    Little Red Riding Hood,
  • The They Might Be Giants song "The Lady and the Tiger", from their album Join Us, is a take on Frank R. Stockton's classic short story "The Lady, or the Tiger?" from the perspective of the two characters, who are worried less about the possible consequences for the story's protagonists and more about how no one will ever open either door and let them out. Also, the lady has Eye Beams.
    The Lady said to the Tiger as they stood behind some doors
    "I'm sick of this job, I don't know what we're waiting her fors
    I'm turning off life support, I'm putting an end to this joke."
    The Tiger thought about this, and then the Tiger spoke.
  • The song "Sadie's Song" by Adrienne Young is a retelling of the traditional murder ballad "Little Sadie" from the perspective of the victim instead of the killer.
  • A Vocaloid song, The Drawing Book and Mary, takes the game Ib and shows it from the point of view of Mary, focusing on her loneliness.
  • In 1978, Shel Silverstein wrote "Father of a Boy Named Sue", which claims the confrontation didn't go exactly the way Sue suggested in Silverstein's earlier song.
  • This happens within at least a couple of Iron Maiden songs: "Run To The Hills", where the first verse is told from the viewpoint of the native American tribes and the rest of the song is from the viewpoint of the settlers. "22 Acacia Avenue" shifts back and forth between the idealistic view of a pimp, and the cynical view of either a police officer or a concerned friend.
  • Several songs from HoneyWorks' Confession Executive Committee ~Love Series~ have an -another story- version, where the events of that particular song are retold from the viewpoint of another character. Usually, the character would be the original singer's Love Interest, and reveals their thoughts on the events and the person.
  • In a cross with The Cover Changes the Gender, Lena Katina covered Owl City's "Deer In The Headlights", which now is told by the girl rejecting the Casanova Wannabe.
  • Also in a cross with The Cover Changes the Gender, Twisted Sister's version of "Leader of the Pack" by The Shangri-Las puts the story in the role of the leader, Jimmy, in the traditional Star-Crossed Lovers way, while putting the twist on the ending with the Spared/Death by Adaptation bit.
  • "Medusa" by Heather Dale is about the mythological villain Medusa. She was born the way she looked and became evil due to the scorn of other's:
    Damn 'em all— I create my own perfection
    Damn 'em all— in the face of their rejection
    Damn 'em all— well, this dog will have its day
    My garden's full of pretty men who couldn't stay away
  • Sometimes the Irish folk song "I Never Will Marry" is from the POV of a man (usually a lover) who either saw a woman commit suicide by sea or knew a woman who did. At other times, the singer is the woman herself, while other versions have it be about two women, or two men.
  • Heather Alexander's "Black Jack Flip" is based on the folk song "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy", which is about a rich woman who runs off with a Hot Gypsy Man. "Black Jack Flip" is about how the woman was dumped by Black Jack Davy the morning afterwards and how she's absolutely pissed.
    • This one is a bit odd in that the original ends with all the gypsies dead and the lady a prisoner in her husband's home, although many covers omit the last verse.
  • Jason Aldean's "Why" was covered by Shannon Brown, changing the second-person pronouns into first-person pronouns. Aldean's version is a man asking his significan other (but really himself) why his temper gets the better of him in arguments; Brown's version is a woman clearly stuck in an emotionally abusive relationship with a man who won't let her go. It borders on Cover Changes The Meaning.
  • Neil Sedaka's "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen" is from the perspective of the older acquaintance of the birthday girl, admiring that she's grown up into a beautiful young woman. "It Hurts to Be Sixteen" sung by Andrea Carroll is from the girl's perspective, describing the confusion of experiencing romantic feelings for the first time and being at such an in-between stage between child- and adulthood.
  • An interesting two-fold version happens with Barry Manilow's "Weekend in New England," about a man who is missing his weekend fling. Reba McEntire's "Whoever's in New England" is a direct Answer Song that takes the perspective of a wife he leaves behind, who suspects Business Trip Adultery and tells him when his fling "finds better things to do," she will be waiting for him at home. Sugarland's "Stay" was inspired by "Whoever's In New England," and is from the perspective of the fling, begging him to stay and coming to the realization that he won't ever leave his wife like he's promised, and she can't go on like this.
  • Catherine Feeny's "Mr. Blue" can be interpreted as being the same story as The Fleetwoods song of the same name but from his lovers point of view. Showing that she didn't leave him because she was cheating on him like the original song claimed but because his depression and paranoia became to much for her to handle.

    Mythology & Religion 
  • Gnosticism contains many perspective flips of the Old Testament and Western Christianity. God is a tinpot cosmic dictator, the world is a transparent prison God uses to keep his human betters enslaved and confused, angels are violent Lovecraftian monsters, and the Serpent of Eden was a benelovent dispenser of wisdom.
  • Romans co-opted a lot of Greek Mythology, but changed it according to their own unique values and biases:
    • The two main gods of war. Greeks preferred Athena for representing tactics and cunning, while Ares was associated with carnage and slaughter. When the militaristic Romans aligned myths about Ares to their god Mars (believed to be the father of their founder Romulus), they dropped all the stigma and made him second in importance only to Jupiter.
    • Greeks considered Odysseus as one of their distinctive heroes for his shrewdness. On the other hand, Romans preferred a more straightforward philosphy to soldiering, and considered Ulysses (Odysseus) an amoral Dirty Coward. This characterization is aided by the fact that Romans believed their forefathers to be exiled Trojans, making Ulysses an ancient nemesis.
    • To the Greeks, Aphrodite is merely the goddess of beauty, love, sex and procreation, who causes trouble wherever she goes due being a spoiled brat. The Roman equivalent Venus is a much wiser, kinder and even motherly goddess who tempers the fiery personalities of her male counterparts Mars and Vulcan, and whose portfolio also includes such things as purification (both in spiritual and even physical sense), success in politics and life, freedom of former slaves, and even victory in battle and a universal creative force. To the Romans, the leader of their forefathers was Venus's own son Aeneas.

    Podcasts 
  • The Magnus Archives has episode 142, "Scrutiny". Up until this point, Jon's Compelling Voice powers have been portrayed as definitively heroic; sure, they have some disturbing aftereffects, but Jon's only ever intentionally used them on villains (like Breekon) and people with information so crucial that the benefits of learning it outweigh the costs of hurting the person (like the brother of the statement-giver in "Cruelty Free"), and we never see what happens to people in the long term after Jon compels them. Until this episode, which consists of a statement given by somebody on the receiving end of Jon's powers. Not only is it revealed that people subjected to Archivist powers are slowly driven mad and, in many cases, have their lives completely ruined, the audience learns that Jon has been going out between episodes and feeding on completely innocent people with no connection to the Entities.

    Poetry 
  • The Dover Bitch by Anthony Evan Hecht is a response to Dover Beach by Matthew Anthony, describing the feelings of the girl the poem is addressed to.
  • The Fat Lady Answers by G. K. Chesterton is a response to Francis Conford's To A Fat Lady Seen From A Train, in which the lady specifically takes offence at "fat white woman whom nobody loves".
  • Richard Howard's poem "Nikolaus Mardruz to his Master Ferdinand, Count of Tyrol, 1565" is a sequel to the 19th century poet Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess". "My Last Duchess", narrated by the Duke to an unspeaking listener (Mardruz), sees the egotistical Duke show off his palace and a portrait of his last wife, whom he is strongly implied to have killed, all the while working with the listener to arrange a new marriage. Howard's poem is Mardruz's take on the entire conversation, as well as detailing his subsequent actions. The poem is a brilliant evisceration of the Duke's pretensions.

    Radio 
  • The Stanley Baxter's Playhouse episode Meg's Tale is Tam O'Shanter from the perspective of the young witch, who's trying to tell Robert Burns what really happened, only to find he's not interested.

    Roleplay 
  • Embers in the Dusk has the so called Negaverse Omakes, samples of what a quest would have looked like in the current situation when ran by another faction. It started with the POV of a nearby Chaos polity which broke its teeth trying to take the heroes out and was now facing a lethal counterattack.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Scion: Ragnarok includes a perspective flip of the chaining of the Fenris Wolf.
    When the Gods tricked and bound me, Tyr looked me in the eye and smiled as he placed his hand in my mouth. He was the only God I trusted, and he lied to me. He betrayed me. So... why is he now God of Justice?
    • Note that in context, the players are given a chance to answer this question, and Fenris will accept good answers.
  • Continuum has the supplement Narcissist: Crash Free. In Continuum, Narcissists are the villains of the setting, fools and madmen who imperil the Continuum's future society with their attempts to alter history to reflect their selfish desires. In Narcissist, "crashers" (as they prefer to be called) are La RĂ©sistance, bravely standing against the Swarm (their term for the Continuum), a soulless and regimented Dystopia that refuses to use its technology to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
  • Mage: The Ascension has Guide to the Technocracy, a sourcebook for running Technocrats as fully-detailed PCs and expanding on both the pro-active and reactive sides of their agenda. It's followed up by the Revised Convention Books, each spotlighting one of the groups that comprise the Technocracy. (The original Convention books weren't this, being written from the perspective of the Technocracy being villains.)
  • In the defunct World of Darkness fangame ''Djinn: The Binding'', there was a vignette of a Middle Eastern teacher named Mr. Jafar. Yes, that Jafar. Let's just say that his version of what happened is different.

    Theatre 
  • Clybourne Park is a Perspective Flip to A Raisin in the Sun. A Raisin in the Sun is about a black family trying to buy a house in a white neighborhood. Clybourne Park features the white family who owns the house and why they're sellling. In Raisin a racist character named Karl tries to buy out the black family to keep them out of the neighborhood; Clybourne has that same character Karl, after he failed, go to the white couple and try to persuade them not to sell.
  • Elisabeth:
    • The musical does this to a degree: the title character isn't entirely vilified but she (as well as some other traditionally nice guys) is depicted as far more flawed than the usual "warm-hearted innocent young beauty" image which looks like she stepped straight out of a Disney movie. (Best example: the incredibly sugary Sissi movies.)
    • On the other hand, her son Rudolf doesn't have a sterling public reputation, having been an incorrigible womanizer and cheater who persuaded an impressionable young woman to die with him in a Murder-Suicide and infected his wife with syphillis. The musical, in order to emphasize his fictional version's role as a Sacrificial Lamb and helpless pawn in the war between Sisi and Death (as well as between her and Franz Joseph/Archduchess Sophie), omits all the unsavory parts of his reputation and paints him as a hypersensitive, liberal young man at odds with his conservative father Franz Joseph (one of the aforementioned) traditional nice guys), Driven to Suicide out of despair from his mother's refusal to intercede and save him from his political and personal stressors. Mary Vetsera (his young mistress) was Adapted Out, and the syphillis thing was given to Franz Joseph instead (who did no such thing in real life). This portrayal of Rudolf is not wholly untrue, since the real Crown Prince was both of those things: the womanizer and the liberal. However, because of the narrative purpose, as well as the story being about his mother, he is more sympathetic according to fictional Sisi's point of view - the tragically dead son she failed to save, in a "don't speak ill of the dead" manner.
  • Eurydice focuses on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice largely from Eurydice's perspective, with intermittent input from Orpheus and Eurydice's father.
  • In the theatrical version of Evita the song "Another Suitcase In Another Hall" is sung by the woman whom Eva has just supplanted as Juan Peron's mistress, and serves as a perspective flip in which we suddenly see the effects of Evita's triumphant progress on someone else, for whom it resulted in defeat not triumph.
  • In Hamilton, the first meeting between Hamilton and his future wife Eliza Schuyler is described in two songs - "Helpless", sung by Eliza, and "Satisfied", sung by her older sister Angelica. Eliza recounts the meeting in a decidedly romantic way (there's her instant infatuation with Hamilton and his insistent courtship of her) - but Angelica later says that she sacrificed her feelings for Eliza's benefit, and that the penniless Hamilton was interested in the Schuylers' money and would have been content with marrying any of the sisters.
    • Most songs are shown from Hamilton's perspective, except for "The Room Where It Happens", which describes a meeting with Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison where they trade financial control for the location of the US capital. Because the exact details of the meeting aren't known, Lin-Manuel Miranda writes the song from Burr's perspective, who desperately wants to be a part of the action but is excluded. Because of this, Hamilton is shown in a much more villainous light here.
  • Into the Woods shows several fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and The Beanstalk, and Rapunzel) from the perspective of two ordinary villagers, a Baker and his wife who were cursed by the witch living next door. As it turns out, an extraordinary amount of each tale were caused by interactions with characters from the others Primarily the Baker and his wife trying to break the curse. Just to name a few, the items required to break the curse were a red cloak, a golden Slipper, a white cow, and yellow hair.
  • Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol shows the entire story of A Christmas Carol through Marley's POV.
  • Jesus Christ Superstar portrays Judas as a "true believer" who has become concerned about the cult of personality surrounding Jesus. He believes the messenger is becoming bigger than the message.
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a perspective flip of Hamlet, although rather than telling it from the villains' point of view, it is retold from the point of view of two characters so insignificant Laurence Olivier didn't include them in his adaptation.
  • Westeros: An American Musical: Tyrion, who gets a decent amount of focus and considers himself the heroic protagonist of the play, is keeping a prostitute named Shae with whom he's convinced to be in a mutually loving relationship. For various reasons, she's no longer in his employ and has effectively betrayed him by the end of the play. The song "Congratshaelations" has Shae tell her side of the story: as far as she was concerned, Tyrion was keeping her despite the fact that she risked getting killed if discovered, married a teenage girl (his canonical wife) without much protest, is not nearly as nice as he thinks he is and got his family on his bad side at times when he really shouldn't have.
  • Like the literature example, Wicked is the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, here named Elphaba. The first act represents the events early in Elphaba's life, where she was roommates with the Good Witch Glinda (then calling herself Galinda). The second act largely covers the events of the film, but with the context of the first act added: the Wicked Witch of the East (and Elphaba's sister), Nessarose, turned her lover Boq to tin and removed his heart to prevent him from leaving her, thus turning him into the Tin Man. Glinda's husband Fiyero confesses his love for Elphaba and is taken away to be tortured for consorting with an enemy of Oz; Elphaba is only able to save his life by casting a spell that turns him to hay, which cannot be killed, thus making him the Scarecrow. The Cowardly Lion is a lab animal that Elphaba and Glinda freed back in Act I, which Boq/the Tin Man claims made him cowardly and unable to make his own decisions. The Witch Hunt for Elphaba was orchestrated not by Glinda but the Wizard and his right-hand women, Madame Morrible, who also caused the tornado that brought Dorothy and Toto to Oz in the first place. In the end, Elphaba and Glinda reconcile their differences, and Elphaba pretends to melt when touched by water with the help of Fiyero/the Scarecrow so that the pair can escape.

    Visual Novels 
  • Astoria: Fate's Kiss: Each character's Main Story 1 and 2 is followed by a short segment showing the love interest's perspective on a scene from the preceding chapters.
  • Cartagra: Sometimes, the perspective with shift from Shugo to the killer.
  • Input Output: Route’s C and D tell approximately the same story, but from the perspective of Ishtar and {HE} respectively. Or rather, from the perspective of Yumi and Hinata as they travel back through time step by step.
  • Kara no Shoujo: Two bad endings change the perspective from Reiji to Mizuhara.
  • Liar! Uncover the Truth: Secret and True Endings are from the perspective of the liar. Scumbag as well, usually, but sometimes it's someone else instead.
  • A common theme in Voltage, Inc. romance games is to have "His POV" side stories that revisit the events of each Love Interest's main route from his point of view.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 

 
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The Too Real Batman Experience

Playing as Batman in the Arkham games, players picked off criminals one by one in the iconic predator maps. In "Kill The Justice League" players now experience how terrifying that was as Task Force X, and this time, the Dark Knight is deprived of his usual ironclad morality.

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