Trope Talk: Are We The Baddies?

A staple twist, a very juicy character revelation, and the beginning of a lot of very fun character arcs! Today let's discuss what happens when a protagonist suddenly realizes the side their on ISN'T actually the side of good!

Got a favorite example I didn't bring up? Very understandable since I leaned very heavily on like three stories in this one - anyway, drop it in the comments!

EXAMPLES IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Promare, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Carmen Sandiego, Star Wars, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Spider-Man 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, Transformers Prime, Mortal Engines, Castlevania, Daredevil (netflix, not affleck), Tangled: The Series

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

[masterfthearts]

Protagonist: “I love squishing kittens with warm hugs!”

Villain: “Yes, *COUGH* yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing here.”

[heather]

This trope is so much more powerful when the protagonist actually questions the worldview they held, rather than just swaps over to the other side without thought.

[LoraCoggins]

"In real life you can't judge a book by its cover, but in fiction that is what the cover is there for." True words to live by.

[GdoubleWB]

“Growing up, we were taught that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history, and that somehow, the war was our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world. What an amazing lie that was. The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation. They don’t see our greatness. They hate us!“
-Zuko’s “It Turns Out We’re The Baddies” speech to Ozai

[Gogoglovitch]

Red: "...or a single conversation with a suspiciously beautiful rebel."
Video: Adora getting starry-eyed over meeting a horse for the first time.
...I mean, yeah, I guess it fits!

[roni_foxcoon]

Minion: Boss? Are we evil? We have skulls, our castle looks like a mess of spikes and we have those firebreathing dragons.
Me: No. Once again we are not evil. We are stoics. The skull should remind us and the enemy that we are going to die. Our castle has thorns BECAUSE we don't want that our dragons overlords land on our towers. I would love to have nice normal towers but dragons can't read and thorns are the best way to tell them "don't land here, please".

[RhysLloyd]

Weirdly enough Bastion from Overwatch is a great example of this. He's a war bot mass produced and ununique, he gets shut down mid battle only to awake 20 years later by a bird nesting on him and the battlefield has grown into a forest. He still has the directive to destroy the nearby city and kill as many humans as possible so he marches towards it through the forest, along the way encountering things that start to awaken a personality and sense of free will, like hearing a woodpecker and mistaking it for gunfire which leads to him destroying a section of forest and being upset when the wildlife that didn't mind his presence before now runs in fear. Eventually he overrides his directive and returns to live peacefully in the forest with his pet bird.

[kristianj.]

"Sometimes when a character realizes they're the bad guy, instead of flipping to be more heroic, this actually causes them to double down."

As Jeff Winger said, "Now that I realize that that was my goal... I can really roll up my sleaves and get it done."

[MegaChickenfish]

8:38 Katara: Aang, I need you to help me avenge my mother's death by killing someone.
Aang: Killing is wrong, you should choose forgiveness.
Katara: Zuko, I need you to help me-
Zuko: I'm already packed.

[catknifetime]

I love the low-key roasting of the “pretty people are the good guys” trope in the first half of the video.

[Little-Buster]

"Are the orphans enjoying the new playground?" This is something I never heard a villain say, ever.

[universalperson]

"Boss, why do we call ourselves the Kitten Squishers?"
*A cloud of psychic kittens causes horrific violence*
"That, minion, is why. We must protect the world from this menace!"

[karmagator]

"It's never too late to stop digging". Words to live by, not just regarding villainy.

[etharchildres]

Maybe the real villains were the friends we made while we were being indoctrinated as children.

[PrzemkoZ]

It can also be interesting to have the newly-defecting hero "run out" of trust.
After believing in the evil empire their whole life and suddenly learning of its evil side, they're so shaken they can't really trust the rebels entirely either.
They end up repeatedly questioning the rebels' actions and prying into every possible secret because they were burned by trusting the empire and now feel the need to ensure the side they're on isn't hiding something evil as well.
This, of course, makes the rebels trust them way less.
Maybe they even end up splitting from the rebels and going off on their own for a bit.

[MrOncollins]

"it's never too late to stop digging" is SUCH good advice.

[fionagibson]

What you don’t see very often is a protagonist that defects from the bad side, but instead of joining the good side immediately, they refuse to take anything at face value after their trust was already exploited once. Give me protagonists that know they did wrong, and resolve to question everything so it never happens again.

…now I have another story idea.

[pottertheavenger]

It's extra fun when the darkly dressed and spooky faction is actually the good side, and the high and pure faction is evil.

[Dhips.]

I loved how "Am I the baddie?" is done in Fahrenheit 541. He never questioned any of it, but enough things happened one after the other for him to finally question himself and who he is.

[LocalDiscordCatgirl]

I like the trope of “Are we evil?” “Well… we’ve done some horrible things, but these rebels did this” “yeah that was pretty fucked, but we have to be better than them”