Playing With / Token Evil Teammate

Basic Trope: An evil or at least unpleasant character that's part of the good guys.

• Straight: Inexplicably, Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl tolerate Dark Blood who is treacherous and a casual murderer.
• Exaggerated: Captain Awesome, Amazing Girl and their good friend Dark Blood, who's worse than the villains.
• Downplayed:
  • Amazing Girl and Captain Awesome are both examples of a Knight in Sour Armour. Dark Blood is an Unscrupulous Hero.
  • The trio is entirely good. Dark Blood, however, is the Token Jerkass, whereas Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl are kind and forgiving.
  • Dark Blood is a villain who loves doing immoral things For the Evulz or because it amused him, while his compatriots have good intentions, tragic backstories, or at least some lines they won't cross.
  • Dark Blood is a Nominal Hero who does what he does for amoral reasons, yet doesn't do anything genuinely evil. He works with a group of heroes motivated by moral principles.
  • Dark Blood doesn’t do anything evil but it is more amoral than his teammates.
  • Dark Blood is a Kleptomaniac Hero or a Mr. Vice Guy, but that's as far as his villainy goes/went.
  • Alice and Bob are Ambiguously Evil, so it's hard to pinpoint whether they're evil or not. Their friend Jessie, on the other hand, is.
  • Dark Blood is an Anti-Villain who has an immoral motivation, but also believes in fair play and has some other Evil Virtues that makes him sympathetic.
  • Dark Blood may be evil, but his teammates aren’t that much better.
  • In a team full of Lawful Good heroes, Dark Blood is a Chaotic Neutral.
• Justified:
  • By having him on The Team, Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl are able to keep Dark Blood from doing more evil than they would otherwise, hereafter known as the Bitterleaf Argument.
  • Dark Blood is in an Enemy Mine with the heroes against an even worse evil.
  • The token evil teammate's only virtue is loyalty, and that loyalty happens to be to a good character.
  • Dark Blood, who is invokedChaotic Evil, would rather join the Chaotic Good heroes than the Lawful Evil Big Bad.
  • Dark Blood, who is invokedLawful Evil, would rather join the Lawful Good heroes than join the Chaotic Evil Big Bad.
  • Dark Blood, who is invokedNeutral Evil, would rather join the Neutral Good heroes than joining one of the two evils in the Big Bad Ensemble.
  • The hero's side, unlike the villains, gets paid for what they're doing and Dark Blood is well-known for his greed.
  • Dark Blood is a Glory Seeker who wants to be admired, loved, & respected.
  • Dark Blood can't get away with killing innocents, but he can get away with killing villains (the corollary of the 'Bitterleaf Argument') and Dark Blood decides to use this to his advantage & join the heroes.
  • Dark Blood was a minion of the Big Bad until his boss committed an unforgivable act of betrayal or abuse. He joined the do-gooders out of a desire to get revenge on his former employer.
  • Captain Awesome saved Dark Blood's life, and whatever faults Dark Blood may have, he does repay his debts.
  • Dark Blood may not be the most pleasant, but his insights on the actions of team Evulz make it easier for Team Good to thwart them.
  • Dark Blood had a Heel–Face Turn, but it wasn't as thorough as the heroes would have hoped.
  • Dramatic Irony: The audience knows Dark Blood is evil, but Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl don't.
  • Dark Blood is still a genuine friend to the heroes, so they can trust him to be on the team without betraying them.
  • Dark Blood is a Knight Templar or Hero with an F in Good who holds basically the same ideals as the heroes, but is willing to cross lines his companions would find unthinkable in pursuit of those ideals. The heroes keep him around because both he's genuinely dedicated to the cause and so they can discourage him from crossing those lines.
• Inverted: Token Good Teammate.
• Subverted:
  • First. Dark Blood joins them, only to betray them later on.
  • Second: Dark Blood isn't really that bad and in some ways might be more moral than the Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl.
  • Third: Dark Blood might seem evil, but when Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl are captured and nearly killed, he risks his life to save them.
  • Fourth: Dark Blood’s teammates are in fact, just as bad as him, and are a group of evil villains who are just hiding it from the public, whilst Dark Blood isn’t.
• Double Subverted:
  • First: It was a Fake Defection. Since Dark Blood is sincerely evil, he was able to fool the villains.
  • Second: ...only to show his true colors as a nasty individual later on.
  • Also Second: Dark Blood turns out to be a Knight Templar and if Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl didn't direct him towards actually evil people, he would go after innocent people for petty crimes.
  • Third: Dark Blood had a selfish motive for saving them, from Evil Gloating or a Smooch of Victory to stealing their gear or an excuse to kill their captor (whom he happens to hate).
• Parodied:
  • Dark Blood is a laugh inducing, mustache twirling, damsel kidnapping, dynamite abusing, Dastardly Whiplash!... who stands next to shining armor paragons of kitten-rescuing.
  • A group of heroes hold job interviews (or an audition) looking for someone to hire under the job title Comedic Sociopath.
  • Dark Blood's evil deeds amount to jaywalking, flipping off babies, and generally being a minor annoyance, all while declaring himself to be the evilest thing in existence. The other heros usually just shrug at his antics and humor him.
• Zig Zagged:
  • Dark Blood just kicked a dog! Wait, he only did it to save the old woman. So... why is he throwing her into traffic??
  • Dark Blood has multiple personality disorder and one or some of his personalities is/are evil.
  • Dark Blood is the Chaotic Stupid Wild Card of the group who switches back-and-forth between good and evil just because he feels like it.
• Averted: All of the heroes are solidly good and it's clear that even the least heroic is no worse than a Lovable Rogue.
• Enforced: “Audiences like a Heroic Comedic Sociopath character so we'll have an evil member of The Team."
• Lampshaded: Captain Awesome remarks on how Dark Blood is more evil than many villains they fight.
• Invoked: Dark Blood knows he'll have more opportunity for mayhem if he fights with the heroes, so he asks to join them.
• Defied:
  • Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl don't let Dark Blood join them because that character is evil.
  • Once Dark Blood joined the team, he decided to undergo a Heel–Face Turn and become a better person.
• Exploited: The villain, Mystery Murder, wants to convince one of the heroes to switch sides or tell him/her about the rest of the team's weaknesses. Aware of Dark Blood's immorality, (s)he chooses him, thinking that he will be the easiest to convince.
• Discussed:
  • "Why is it every team I've been in has a villain or a jerk (or Crystal Dragon Jesus Save Us, both)?"
  • "Everyone on this team is so nice! ... Wait! Does that mean I'm the evil teammate? Crap! I suck at being a Jerkass!"
• Conversed: "Wait a minute, why is there a villain helping out the heroes?"
• Deconstructed:
  • 1.) Other good characters are disgusted by Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl putting up with such a horrible person and/or the heroes tarnish their reputation by allowing the teammate to do nasty things in pursuit of their goals.
  • 2.) Dark Blood gets kicked off Team Good because Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl are fed up with his insatiable bloodlust.
  • 3.) A bunch of nerds play a tabletop RPG, and most of them play heroic characters. At the start of a new campaign, one of them rolls an evil character, causing uneasiness in the group. Ultimately, the player playing the evil character touches the trigger of another player, resulting in real life drama.
  • 4.) Dark Blood throws his allies under the bus because Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl finally start trying to rein him in and/or Mystery Murder made him a better offer.
  • 5.) Dark Blood explicitly states that he is not going to stay on the side of the heroes forever at the beginning of the story as he has his own agenda to deal with. Later on, despite all their bickering and and outrages about him, Dark Blood finally leaves and the entire team is left with a bad taste in their mouths from losing him.
  • 6.) Dark Blood is kept on the team so the heroes can keep their own evil traits out of sight and out of mind.
• Reconstructed:
  • 1.) Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl can be really soft and don't deal out the tough love/justice that they should- so this guy does it for them.
  • 2.) Dark Blood vows to focus his bloodlust on Always Chaotic Evil monsters and repulsively evil people and so Captain Awesome and Amazing Girl refrain from kicking him off Team Good.
  • 3.) The RPG nerds agree from the start that inter-party conflict should not only be assured but encouraged, and so the inevitable Gambit Pileup is entertaining rather than horrible. Also, the player with the evil characters agrees to be an Even Evil Has Standards sort of evil to better avoid real-life triggers.
  • 4.) Dark Blood is not a random psychopath, but a Noble Demon tormented by his Horror Hunger, and so he's kept on the team in the hopes of finding a cure, or at least a way to surround him with capable combatants to reign him in.
  • 4.) Dark Blood is with the heroes in the first place because he ultimately finds them more to his liking than his fellow villains. His Face–Heel Turn is short lived, and he announces his return by throwing Mystery Murder out a window.
  • 5.) Dark Blood, while still contrasting with the rest of the team, is an Enigmatic Minion that frequently returns to the heroes' service whenever it suits his greater goal. As such, he is always accepted back, though never truly trusted, and they always know his aid is temporary.
  • 6.) Dark Blood also has some experience with his own evil traits to help the team deal with theirs, which already aren't as bad, agreeing that they shouldn't have to be brought down to even his level.
• Played For Laughs:
  • Being a Heroic Comedic Sociopath, the appalling behaviour of Dark Blood is so over-the-top that it gets funny.
  • Dark Blood is a Harmless Villain-type and his "evil deeds" are all Poke the Poodle.
• Played For Drama: Dark Blood is going after the Big Bad to usurp the position for himself, thus creating a Meet the New Boss scenario for Team Good but they need Dark Blood for one reason or another. It's a tense who-will-betray-who first situation.

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