Duplicate Trope: Reverse Mole

The concept behind The Mole is pretty clear: somebody within an organization is secretly spying on them for another organization. That's also what the term means outside this wiki.

However, according to the trope description, The Mole is strictly for bad guys spying on the good guys; and the Reverse Mole is strictly the opposite, i.e. good guys spying on the bad guys. This distinction doesn't work.

• First, we don't usually split tropes into a "good guy version" and a "bad guy version", and indeed, related tropes like A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing and Red Herring Mole don't have separate pages for good and bad. The Mole itself also has numerous examples of good guys spying on bad guys.
• Second, this doesn't account for Grey-and-Gray Morality, or works that otherwise don't have clear-cut good and bad guys.
• And third, the name Reverse Mole naturally attracts all kinds of subversions or retcons of The Mole, because it can be "reversed" in various unrelated ways.

My view is that Reverse Mole is redundant to The Mole, and should be cut and merged into the latter.

Total count:

• 27% are correct.
• 2% regular non-reverse mole.
• 16% bad guy spying on different bad guys.
• 14% double/triple/multiple agent.
• 6% suspected of being a mole but actually isn't.
• 16% bad guy allies with or supports the good guys, but is not in any way a plant or a spy.
• 8% miscellaneous other tropes but not this one.
• 11% not enough context.

So overall, this trope is misused for lots of things that are "sort of The Mole but different"; by my count 62% to 73% misuse. I think that makes a strong case that this shouldn't be a distinct trope.

Edited by Spark9 on Nov 11th 2020 at 7:15:07 AM

Opening, seems like we have a compelling argument for disambiguating or redirecting this to The Mole.

I actually thought Reverse Mole was "The Mole who turned back" but then we got Becoming the Mask for it. Yeah I agree with merging.

Merge.

Merge.

Merge

Merge

Merge

Merge.

Merge

Merge.

And that's the 10th "Merge".

Let's give it until Monday to collect additional opinions, but it looks like we're merging. I'm adding the banner to the page.

How is this trope different from Fake Defector?

Edited by Dghcrh on Nov 13th 2020 at 7:52:37 PM

Reverse Mole is supposed to be "pretends to be one of the bad guy's loyal members, but turns out to be secretly working for the hero". It is the "reverse" of The Mole, which is supposed to be "pretends to be one of the hero's loyal members but turns out to be secretly working for the bad guy".

Fake Defector is "pretends to defect from the good guys to the bad guys, but in fact remains loyal to the good guys all along". Heel Face Mole is the Reverse Mole to Fake Defector's The Mole... and I immediately wonder if perhaps it has the same problem, but that's another thread.

Consider me the 11th "merge."

And yes, ++ to merging.

I've been arguing that there's no reason to split The Mole based on morality for years. Another merge vote.

May as well merge if the good guy version is not distinct (as so far, it doesn't seem like it is and causes other problems).

Merge.

Polymerize the two tropes.

Merge

Another vote for merging the tropes.

Merge.

Not that we need any more votes, but Merge.