(cache) Face Heel Turn - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Heel Turn; Turn To The Dark Side

Mal Reynolds: How come you didn't turn on me?
Jayne Cobb: Money wasn't good enough.
Mal Reynolds: What happens when it is?
Jayne Cobb: Well... that'll be an interesting day.

- Firefly episode 1, "Serenity"

In Professional Wrestling, a "good" wrestler (a face) is occasionally tempted by The Dark Side, or just gets fed up, and becomes a heel. Magazines and other promotional material from the various wrestling "leagues" frequently comment on various wrestlers' changes in "alignment" (in wrestling's fictional plotline known as kayfabe) nearly as frequently as they actually cover events in the ring themselves. (They even actually use phrases like "Face Heel Turn.")

In other genres, it means "good guy turns bad," the opposite of the Heel Face Turn. Perhaps the former hero(ine) has become a Rival Turned Evil. Perhaps he or she has lost perspective, and become a Well Intentioned Extremist. Perhaps something horrible has happened that shattered his or her faith in good, and he or she has become a Fallen Hero. The hero may have bravely declared "You shall not pass!" or his companions may have found it impossible to ensure that No One Gets Left Behind, but he proved to be Not Quite Dead and, deranged by his suffering, blames his companions for abandoning him. Perhaps the hero has had too many of her good deeds come back to bite her and decided that being a hero is no longer worth it. Maybe he or she has had enough of being pushed around, laughed at and put through hell, or maybe he or she has snapped after one too many rounds of Break The Cutie. Perhaps his (alleged) allies have made his life too difficult, or maybe she's just gone Drunk With Power. Perhaps there is a Writer On Board committing Character Derailment.

Contrast The Mole: The Mole was always working for the Big Bad from the beginning, whereas a character making a Face Heel Turn was a genuine good guy until their change of heart.

In a world full of Brainwashed victims, they may be the one who appears to be but really is Not Brainwashed.

Examples

Anime

Yui in Fushigi Yuugi, and most other instances of Rival Turned Evil.
Kaiser Ryo following a textbook Freak Out in Yu-Gi-Oh GX. The dub even has Judai/Jaden compare this to, "when a pro-wrestler suddenly starts dressing in black and throwing chairs in the ring." Judai, like his predecessor in Yu-Gi-Oh, also temporarily turns to The Dark Side (hey, Superpowered Evil Sides take some getting used to).
Vegeta in Dragonball Z who was admittedly already a Heel Face Turn and technically, just returning to his original alignment only to go through yet another Heel Face Turn after the showdown of rivals although not before sucker punching The Hero, Goku. This whole arc also has the bonus of being a mid-life crisis as well as being a Not Brainwashed moment. Come to think of it, he is probably the one character in that entire series to do as many alignment changes as a pro wrestler.
We know that Griffith from Berserk is a bad guy at the start of the anime, but most of us wouldn't know this from the idealistic mercenary leader that we meet in flashback during the second episode, who is about as close to The Messiah as one can get in a series like Berserk. The anime, which follows the Golden Age manga arc of the series, is about Guts's time with Griffith's Band of the Hawks, and the events that lead up to Griffith's betrayal, his ascension as the fifth member of the Godhand, and Guts's circumstances in the very first episode. And when Griffith finally does go bad in the final episodes, he goes very, very bad.
Walter C. Dornez, loyal aide to Integra Hellsing in Hellsing first seems to do a Face Heel Turn against his will after been brainwashed by the villains but is later to be revealed to have been a willing traitor since WWII.
The Uchiha Bros. (tm) from Naruto might be taken into account, though their Heel turns were not really a alignment change. Maybe except for Sasuke's latest.
Julia and Collins from Blood Plus, though the former does return to the side of good after a while. The other gets a bullet to the brain.
Bleach has the infamous revelation of the main villains Aizen, Gin, & Tousen which I won't go into, but the 2nd filler arc also has 3rd seat Kifune of Third Squad. He even get a literal Face Heel Turn animation in the intro starting in episode 179.
- Also, when Orihime was forced to go with the Arrancars in exchange of her friends and hometown's safety, the Shinigamis thought she had gone through a Face Heel Turn. Ichigo refused to believe it and decided to go rescue her, triggering the beginning of the Arrancar arc.
Lord Genome from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, as shown in Parallel Works Eight. When he snaps, he snaps hard.
- Post-Time Skip Rossiu, previously a good guy, sets up Simon as a scapegoat for the problems caused by the anti-Spirals and takes over the government - and his plan to survive the anti-Spiral attacks involves leaving a large portion of the world's population to die.
  - Simon wasn't really set up, they just charged him for destroying a Mugan, which caused a lot of collateral damage, and Rossiu only did what he thought was best for the people, placing him in Well Intentioned Extremist territory. Rossiu did show regret over his actions, going as far as to attempt suicide.
Folken from the Vision Of Escaflowne does this to begin with, followed by another Heel Face Turn near the end of the story, leading to his extremely bizarre "fated" death.
The entire Order of the Black Knights in Code Geass.
- They dont actually turn from good guys to bad, they turn against the hero after being convinced that he had been playing them for pawns, and then the hero goes out of his way to convince them that they are right.

Comic Books

Hal Jordan, Green Lantern poster child, underwent a psychotic turn into a being that wanted to reshape all of existence. Later explained and retconned, but still heavily controversial.
Cassandra Cain, the latest Batgirl, to unanimous disapproval. After spending 76 issues delving into her extraordinary psychology and fleshing her out into a complex character with high moral standards, DC savagely tore her down and made her into a cheap, drugstore-variety Dragon Lady who started killing people like roaches. Now, they've very cleverly revealed it she was actually brainwashed. Her? Really DC? Drug control?
Mary Marvel provided an interesting contrast as a Golden Age teen amidst modern comics characters. Unfortunately DC decided to make her turn evil in notably Wall Banger ways. Her clothes even turned black.
- And her skirt was just as short as Supertorso's "Belt with a trim" microskirt after the switch! Bad move all around... then the next outfit made it look good.
In a particularly bad example of Executive Meddling, DC planned to turn Captain Atom into supervillain "Monarch." At the last minute they changed their minds and made the character "Hawk" murder his partner "Dove" and don Monarch's armor. Then they changed their minds again, giving Hawk the new handle of "Extant", putting Captain Atom into Monarch's armor and creating a new Hawk and Dove team.
Two Face, in the Batman comics (and later, The Dark Knight) is a good-guy district attorney who turns into an evil criminal.

Film

Anakin Skywalker of the Star Wars saga, who turned his back on the Jedi to become the ruthless Darth Vader.
Rooster in Righteous Kill.
In Undercover Brother the title character turns his back on the Brotherhood after he falls in ~~love~~ lust with Penelope Snow. Luckily Sista Girl brings him back to his senses.

Literature

An even more "they shoulda seen it coming" example: Raistlin Majere in the original Dragonlance books.
Subverted in Red Seas Under Red Skies, where the first chapter has Jean betraying Locke to a pair of assassins, then it flashes back to the start of the story. When it arrives back at the betrayal scene, we find that Jean was tricking the assassins and Locke just missed the hand signal for "lying."
A certain Imperial general in one of the later Warhammer 40000: Gaunt's Ghosts is eventually corrupted by Chaos. Surprisingly, he's shown to actually be a decent man when hit by amnesia-even his jailer notes that the general becomes ever more an unlikable bastard as he regains his memory.
Dybbuk from Childrenofthe Lamp, though it was sort-of foreshadowed in that his father just happened to be Iblis, the most evil djinn of the most evil djinn tribe, meaning he was half Always Chaotic Evil. It wouldn't be surprising if he eventually had a change of heart, though.
Judas, pretty much the ur-example of this.

Live Action TV

Londo Mollari begins the Babylon 5 Myth Arc as the human commander's closest ally, but becomes The Dragon (or at least The Patsy for the Big Bad) as the series progresses. In fact, Londo vacillates between good and evil repeatedly as the series goes on.
- Also on Babylon 5, Talia Winters, once her "sleeper" personality was unlocked.
- ...and Lennier, too.
- ...and Garibaldi in season 4, due to a bad case of More Than Mind Control.
- ...and Lyta Alexander
- ...and Anna Sheridan, who could be assumed to be a good person prior to getting Shadowed.
- ...and the Vorlons.
The third season of Degrassi The Next Generation revolves entirely around Manny and Sean turning heel, then slowly turning back to face.
Half the cast of Alias.
On Lost, Michael was of the Well Intentioned Extremist variety, as he just wanted to save Walt, his son. He felt really bad about it, but there's varying opinion over whether or not we should feel sorry for him.
- Locke also tagged along with the Others for a while, but he didn't really switch sides.
Gul Dukat of Star Trek Deep Space Nine starts off as a recurring annoyance, but gradually warms up to the crew and looks like he's on the road to BadassDecay... then he realizes Good Is Dumb and stabs everyone in the back.
- Eddington is a more straightforward example from Deep Space 9.
Willow and Faith of Buffy (both of whom get subsequent Heel Face Turns).
Jake Straka, for some reason, near the end of The Guardian
Tyr on Andromeda — though we all knew it would happen sooner or later, as Tyr was always playing his own game.
Every character on Charmed, at some point or other.
Agent Li (Lee?), who may have been a mole all along on NCIS.
Undersheriff Mc Keen on CSI.
Dr. Zack Addy, who turned out to be the serial killer's apprentice on Bones.
Sweet-natured Kes returns to Voyager to crumple bulkheads and anonymous ensigns in "Fury". It turns out she's angry at her former friends because…well it's never really explained. But don't worry as everything's back to normal by the end.
St. Elsewhere's Dr. Peter White winds up being a serial rapist.
In the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, Felix Gaeta leads a failed mutiny against Admiral Adama, resulting in his and Zarek's deaths.
- Earlier on in the series, Boomer appears to have joined Cavil's side in the Cylon civil war.
Shane Vandrell in The Shield, more than once.
24 embodies this trope. Most seasons have at least one of The Mole at some point. Sometimes this turns out to be misleading, with a few Fake Defectors, but there are several infamous true face heel turns. Going back to the first season was Nina Myers, who turns into a recurring villain for two more seasons. Most recently was the even more drastic Tony Alemida, whose Heel Face Revolving Door led the audience to be surprised by the (second) revelation that he was a villain, despite the fact that this was technically common knowledge months before the season even began.

Professional Wrestling

And, of course, countless "competitors" in Professional Wrestling. Often, a heel turn will stem from a face feeling as though he doesn't have the respect of the fans or his fellow faces; this is sometimes set up by having the face lose for several weeks in a row, finally lose his temper and blame the fans or other faces. Usually, the new heel will prove his heelishness with a sneak attack on a former face ally, often aided by his new heel allies. Heel turns by wrestlers who constantly switch between heel and face (Lex Luger and Paul Wight are two examples who spring to mind) don't have all that much impact on the fans, but when a long-term face goes heel it's a big deal. The biggest example of this would be babyface Hulk Hogan's heel turn at WCW event Bash at the Beach in 1996 after over a decade of superheroics, which shocked fans and generated mainstream attention. A wrestler who turns often enough eventually settles into "tweener" mode, where they're basically a face or a heel as the storyline demands.
The heel turn is also a popular way to split up a face tag team, especially when one member of the team is thought to have more potential as a singles wrestler. One of the most famous of these was when the Rockers, a pair of high-flying pretty-boy faces, appeared on Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake's talk show "The Barbershop" to air out their tensions of preceding weeks. After seeming to reconcile with a hug, Shawn Michaels proceeded to kick Marty Jannetty in the face and toss him through the (fake) glass window of the set, setting up his new persona of The Heartbreak Kid and a lifetime of superstardom.
Another famous tag team split occurred in the early 90's of WCW, when Lex Luger and Sting were the top faces, feuding with Ric Flair's devious Four Horsemen stable. In the weeks prior to a huge tag team title match, the Horsemen constantly told Luger that Sting was only out for himself and would abandon Luger when he needed him most, teasing that Sting would turn on him and join the Horsemen. In the match itself, a badly beaten Luger tried to tag his partner, but Sting had just been knocked off the ring apron by Horsemen associates, thereby "proving" that he wasn't there when he needed him, and prompting Luger to turn on Sting and join the Horsemen himself.
There seems to be a distressing tendency for a wrestler's Face Heel Turn to coincide with his winning a championship title. Supposedly, this is to maintain the "underdog" status of the face wrestler, and let the fans root for him against the Jerk Ass with the title. Sometimes the turn happens in the title match itself, if the 'underdog' wins the title through a particularly cheap method (use of foreign object, another wrestler interfering with the match, and so on).

Theater

Arguably Elphaba from Wicked fits this trope, after having everything she tries spectacularly backfire on her, and having everyone she loves die all around her, she snaps during the song 'No Good Deed' dedicating herself to a lifetime of evil. Almost immediately subverted when she is shown to be just very, very pissed off, but not actually evil a mere song later.

Video Games

EVERYONE in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne.
The supposed Face Heel Turn of Ralgha "Hobbes" nar Hhallas in Wing Commander 3 was considered a definite Wall Banger for most fans of that series. In this case, he was an (unwitting) mole.
Sorbet in Magical Starsign fakes one as part of an elaborate plan to trick the Big Bad, and it's so convincing that even your party falls for it...unfortunately, you waltz in just as her plan is about to come to fruition.
- Fortunately, it wasn't the best thought out plan anyway...
Ghaleon in Lunar: The Silver Star.
Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII goes through a particularly malignant Face Heel Turn in the main character Cloud's flashback...the awesomeness of which also made him the ultimate Draco In Leather Pants character.
- The PSP game Crisis Core (where you play as Zack, the guy Cloud absorbed the personality of) portrays this moment at the end. You even get to see Sephiroth before he went batshit. Not to mention there's quite a few other Heel Face Turns (you are working for the villains after all).
Seifer in Final Fantasy VIII goes through a much more low-key version of this as well.
Kain from Final Fantasy IV, partly because of brainwashing, but also partly because of his envy for his best friends Cecil, who was the boyfriend of the girl he had a crush on.
Hardain and his cronies from Fire Emblem 3.
- Alvis From Fire Emblem 4 though he never was part of your party.
  - Orson from Fire Emblem 8.
Captain Lee in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2 pulls one of these, after spending his entire time kicking dogs. Even a Dead Little Sister, or in this case family, doesn't protect him.
Jerry Ying from the John Woo game Stranglehold, who starts out as Tequila's partner and ally inside Wong's Dragon Claw syndicate, only to go native during the Chicago History Museum stage and carry out Wong's orders to kill Tequila and Billie, Wong's own daughter. Tequila survives, but Billie isn't so lucky, setting up a furious showdown between partners as Tequila seeks vengeance for Billie.
Arthas in Warcraft III
Beat in The World Ends With You does a Face Heel Turn and the opposite.
Baten Kaitos has a fantastic example in the first game, where the main character, Kalas is the one who betrays the party. He does rejoin later.
Sialeeds in Suikoden V.
The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, who switches from United States allegiances to the Soviet Union. It turns out that The Boss was really doing this to help the United States regain The Philosopher's Legacy. Naked Snake kills her, taking her position as Big Boss, only afterwards learning the truth.
- It's more of a Fake Defector really.
Riku from Kingdom Hearts was, unknown to his best friend Sora, gradually making the Face Heel Turn, desperate to save Kairi through whatever means possible. He ends up going a similar way as Kain from Final Fantasy IV, complete with a return to the good side and a My God What Have I Done .
Mario plays the antagonist in Donkey Kong Junior.
The player character and his Five Man Band in Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance becomes the Five Bad Band in the Black Knight expansion.
At the end of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the Big Bad asks you to do this. You can actually say yes - it gives you a Nonstandard Game Over.
Sigma from Mega Man X was originally the leader of the Maverick Hunters before he caught (and soon after became) The Virus from Zero and decided to go evil and declare war against mankind. Zero, in turn, does a Heel Face Turn, caused by said virus transfer via a punch to the forehead.
- Colonel from Megaman Battle Network was previously the Navi of the leader of a team that aimed to purge Nebula from the Net before doing a Face Heel Turn.
It's stated that Gol and Maia from the original Jak And Daxter were good once, but exposure to Dark Eco caused a faceheel before the beginning of the game.
Bastila in Knights Of The Old Republic. Can also happen to anyone you have a high influence with in the sequel, if you're going dark.
In Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Faize pulls a big one. He doesn't just become a villain, he becomes the final boss.
Gradius ReBirth retcons Venom into an example of this—he starts off as James's CO, but becomes a heel after you complete the game's third loop. He goes on to become the Big Bad of Nemesis 2 and 3, two lesser-known installments released on the MSX over 20 years before.
Kazuya from Tekken. He was originally a Ryu-esque cookie-cutter hero but eventually let the devil consume him and became (arguable) one of the bad guys. By the beginning of the sixth game, he had plans for world domination.
In Neverwinter Nights 2, Neeshka, Sand and Qara will betray you at the end of the game if their influence is too low.
In the backstory for Star Fox, Pigma Dengar betrayed James Mc Cloud to Andross. Later in the series, Andross's grandson Dash Bowman undergoes one of these in two alternate endings for Star Fox: Command.

Web Comics

White Mage from 8-bit Theater. It didn't take.
- Although he was never much of a hero to begin with, Black Mage has now officially joined the villains, resulting in Dri'zzl being forced to become a Light Warrior.
Dr. Schlock from Sluggy Freelance, though he'd been straddling the fence for quite some time, anyway.
Vaarsuvius of Order Of The Stick, and how.
Agatha shows how to do this, or go Well-Intentioned Extremist in the 5/04/09 strip. http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090504
- Chances of snapping out of it is high.

Web Original

Corey from Three In The Afternoon does this not once, but twice, taking full advantage of his more idealistic friends the second time around.
Any time a previous non-player starts to actively participate in the 'game' in Survival Of The Fittest. As you might imagine, this tends to happen a lot. Then again, the opposite is also becoming more common.
Julia van Helden does this in KateModern in response all the traumatic experiences she suffers while helping the K-Team, and out of misplaced love for a villain
In Associated Space, Nazar actually defeats Fatebane, captures him, and brings him to the villain. However, when he doesn't get paid, he decides to break the hero out, inadvertently joining Fatebane's side.

Western Animation

Kids Next Door had an agent, Numbuh 274, who had appeared in a couple Season 1 and Season 2 episodes become a villain from Season 3 onwards after turning 13. However, it turned out that he'd been working for the good side all along in the final episode of Season 6.
Raimundo in the season one finale of Xiaolin Showdown. Shortly into season two, he does a Heel Face Turn and returns to his friends, but not without suffering some consequences and trust issues.
Dinobot, in Transformers: Beast Wars episode "Maximal No More". He does a Heel Face Turn back at the end, though, upon realizing that just because everything's going according to Megatron's plans doesn't mean that Megatron isn't a dangerous madman.
- Blackarachnia, in "Transformers: Animated" pulls her Face Heel Turn during the (mainly)flashback episode "Along Came A Spider." We discover that when they were in the Autobot Academy, Elita-One, Sentinel, and Optimus went to an organic planet, even though it was forbidden, and they encountered giant spiders. Escaping from the spiders, Elita used her download power to borrow Optimus's grapplers, but ran out of time, falling into a pit full of the spiders when Optimus failed to catch her with his other grappler. She attempted to use her download power on the spiders, but, the spiders being organic, it turned her into a mutated part-organic, part-mechanical Transformer with one of the spiders as her alt-mode. The new signal type made her impossible for Optimus to pick up on his radar, and led him and Sentinel to believe Elita was dead, and Blackarachnia to believe they abandoned her, and she joined the Decepticons.
Tai Lung of Kung Fu Panda. In this case, perhaps somewhat justified after the number his masters pulled on him, which this editor considers close to an Et Tu Brute moment: Shifu and Oogway may not have literally pulled daggers on their former student, but after years of being raised to believe he would be the Dragon Warrior, training constantly until his bones cracked, having his head filled with dreams by his father-figure, and even being given the Meaningful Name, to have them turn on him and refuse to grant what he'd aimed for his whole life must have felt like a backstab to the snow leopard.
In Kim Possible The Dragon Shego used to be a Superhero before becoming a villain. Various other characters have short, often for a single episode Heel Turns, including Ron at least twice.

Real Life

F1 racing driver Kimi Raikkonen seems to have pulled one of these, at least in the eyes of UK fans. Until 2006 he was a charismatic underdog in a badly malfunctioning car, and one of the few serious rivals to Michael Schumacher. In 2007 he moved to Ferrari, won the title, and thus immediately lost the sympathy vote. Needless to say, it didn't help that his move coincided with Lewis Hamilton's arrival at Mc Laren.
- Exactly what did he did do, except win the championship in a perfectly legitmate manner (albeit thanks to Hamilton making so many crucial mistakes in the final two races)? I.e., Raikkonen did not, and I must give emphasis to this, use any dirty trick, cheat... to win. Putting him as a Face Heel Turn seems to be more of the case of pure jealousy and / or misunderstading what it means to be a villain. You could even blame FIA for eventual problems Hamilton may have had regarding punishments and the like, but not him.
- Fernando Alonso is a better example, who turned from the magnificent World Champion to a jealous angry kid envying Hamilton's driving skills expressing a "You might be the better driver, but I'm the World Champion, damn you!" attitude.
- This Troper feels that the closest NASCAR equivalent is Kyle Busch. That he won the first ever Cup race with the "Car of Tomorrow" bodystyle and proceeded to rip it a new one was bad. Winning races in the Great American Motorsport in a Toyota is borderline unforgivable. But wrecking Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Richmond was what crossed the line into Smug Snake territory. You just want to punch the jerk in the face.
  - Then again, since NASCAR became so horribly sanitized over the years, maybe Shrub is what we need...
  - Kyle's an antihero.
Cats. They go from this to this.
- Sometimes they're only playing. When lion cubs bite each other, for example, the bite isn't a real bite.
- Likewise, if your housecat bites or scratches you, and you aren't bleeding all over the place, it didn't mean to actually hurt you.
In American Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold's name became synonymous with the word "traitor" after switching sides from the American Continental Army to the British Empire.
- He was Rewarded As A Traitor Deserves, to a degree (he wasn't outright betrayed). He left another British defector behind to get lynched and was somewhat unpopular when he got to Britain.
France pulled one of these in WW 2 when it was Vichy France.