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Normally, the villain or rival is trying to stop the hero For the Evulz or perhaps just out of selfishness. However, sometimes things are not what they seem. The mentor the party has come to trust throughout the story has been using them, or perhaps corrupting them, and the apparent Big Bad was actually trying to save the world, and redeem them. Expect a Heroic BSOD or three.

Normally, this can go several ways. The character can either undergo a Face Heel Turn or Heel Face Turn, they can become completely depressed and take their life, or they can refuse to believe the realization and continue helping their mentor as before. Alternatively, this may end up being subverted, and the villain is just trying to trick them by painting their favorite hero as a villain.

Obviously, this will contain spoilers.

Examples of Wrong Side All Along include:


Anime and Manga[]

  • Blue Dragon, the henchman of the Big Bad (after the Big Bad has supposedly been defeated) reveals that the party is being used to open up the Dark World by their leader. Of course, they don't realize this until after helping almost destroy the world.
  • Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, Finn has been using them, and the rival angel is trying to stop Finn as he knows that she has been possessed by evil.
  • In Darker Than Black, The Syndicate has been plotting for years to annihilate all Contractors, which Evening Primrose, thought to be the Big Bad, was actually trying to stop. Not that surprising for the morally ambiguous Syndicate the protagonists work for, but it is surprising that The Syndicate also controls intelligence organizations (like MI 6) and the police that the supporting characters work for, essentially making the majority of the cast bad guys.

Comics[]

Film[]

  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indiana Jones fights against the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword during the film. It turns out they're just trying to protect the Grail's hiding place from the Nazis. The person who sent Jones on the mission to find the Grail, Walter Donovan, is really the Big Bad and a Nazi.
  • In Sky High, the cute new girl is playing him for a fool she's actually one of their supervillains who got age reduced, and the imposing bully guy is actually just hot-headed.

Literature[]

  • Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: The heroes are striving desperately to save the mortal races from the undying wrath of the Storm King, and are using the fragments of a book of prophecy to help them. The book was part of a very long con by the Storm King, strong in ill-will but weak in physical presence. By following the book's instructions they're filling out the recipe to bring him back from the dead and undo hundreds of years of history.

Live Action TV[]

  • In the first episode of Alias, Sidney Bristow is happily working for the CIA and her boss/mentor Arvin Sloane. Then she finds out that she's not working for the CIA, she's working for a terrorist group against the CIA, and Sloane is in on it.

Video Games[]

  • In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Shanoa is instructed by her master Barlowe to cast the Dominus glyphs to permanently destroy Dracula. His other disciple Albus interrupts the ceremony and steals the glyphs, leaving her without memory. The game goes into a long trek to track him down and get the glyphs back. It turns out the glyphs were intended to revive Dracula, which was Barlowe's goal all along, and that casting it would kill her, which Albus was trying to prevent.
  • In Jade Empire, you find out that your mentor has been playing you all along, and basically used you as a tool to take over the empire.
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