Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Gil Graham in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
- Subverted in : Daitokouji-sensei, Judai's teacher and ally, was revealed to be The Mole, and then later The Mole for the good guys.
- Played straight with Edo Phoenix's adoptive father DD. He was a criminal who murdered Edo's true father and stole the Ultimate D card, becoming a vassal of the Light of Ruin in the process; the whole reason he took Edo under his wing was to throw suspicion off of himself. Eventually, he confronted Edo and the truth came out, but Edo defeated him (ironically, using a card that his father designed to defeat the Ulitimate D card) and DD perished in the resulting fire.
- Kabuto in Naruto's Chuunin Exam Tournament Arc.
- Colonel Urube Ishikawa in Mobile Fighter G Gundam.
- Kirei Kotomine in Fate/stay night, though neither Rin nor Shirou trust him very much anyway.
- Words Worth: Both Tessio of the Shadow Tribe and Menza of the Light Tribe, who are later revealed to be two halves of the same entity, who is pushing the tribes to remain in a constant state of war to keep the Words Worth Tablet prophecy from being fulfilled.
- Big Bad Albert Maverick from Tiger & Bunny is this to Barnaby. He steers Barnaby to become a highly marketable (and easily-manipulated) corporate-sponsored superhero who works tirelessly for the company and TV channel of which he is the CEO. Barnaby constantly looks to Maverick for guidance (and obviously considers him to be a Parental Substitute) for more than two-thirds of the series.
Comic Books
- Haazen in Knights of the Old Republic. He manipulates Lucien Draay into doing some truly nasty things — including ordering the deaths of several of his colleagues apprentices and trying to kill his own — because that was supposed to prevent the return of the Sith. Turns out Haazen was Sith himself, and was aiming to both control the Jedi through Lucien and generally spit on the grave of Barrison Draay, Lucien's father and Haazen's one-time friend-turned-rival.
- In Bookhunter, after the Library Police finally retrieve the stolen book, Agent Bay realizes that the stolen copy was actually another forgery—because the original book had already been stolen by the Chief of Library Security.
- Spider-Man
- When NYPD criminologist Carlie Cooper discovers Officer Vin Gonzales is part of a conspiracy to frame Spidey, she goes straight to the precinct sergeant. He turns out to be deeper in it than Vin, and quite prepared to pin the whole thing on Vin and Carlie.
- Ultimate Spider-Man had Jean De Wolffe. Her regular 616 Marvel universe counterpart was a by the book cop who had a soft spot for Spider-Man, and whose death was a tragedy. Her Ultimate Universe counterpart seemed to be shaping up to be similar, sending Spider-Man to potential bad guys' hideouts but in the end turned out to be working for the Kingpin and unceremoniously shot by The Punisher because he knew she was a bent cop.
- Then there was Ezekiel. This mysterious man whose powers seemed to be the same as Spidey's (except mystical in nature, not scientific) helped him against Morlun and Shathra, predators of supernatural origin bent on preying on the hero. Ezekiel told Spidey that the spider that had bitten him was not mutated by the radiation, but actually trying to give him its powers before the radiation killed it. This meant that Spider-Man was now part of the supernatural food chain, and had become a target for other totems and beings who feed on totems (Hence why so many of Spider-Man's foes were based on animals; on some level, they 'sensed' that Peter was a true totem while they were merely impostors and were thus driven to destroy him. But it was all lies. It was later revealed that Morlun and Shathra were really after Ezekiel, and Ezekiel attempted to direct the consequences of gaining his powers onto Spider-Man himself, taking Spider-Man to the temple where he had been given his own powers and drawing blood to attract a massive spider that would take the 'false' totem warrior as a sacrifice. At the last moment, however, he realized that he had done nothing but selfish things with his powers, while Peter had selflessly risked his life to save others again and again. With that in mind, he attacked the spider, sacrificing himself to save Peter.
- In All Fall Down, AIQ Squared is this to Siphon and the Pantheon. Mildly subverted in that he is legitimately looking out for IQ Squared's best interests.
- The French series La Quęte de l'Oiseau du Temps: Mara, the old witch-princess who sends the heroes on the quest in the first place, secretly wishes to steal the powers of the God of Evil as opposed to sealing him.
Fan Fic
- Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race has Governor Deacon's adviser, Newkirk, who didn't have well-laid plans. While not outright treacherous, he showed little to no concern for public safety. This got Newkirk fired.
- Tealove's Steamy Adventure. The story starts when a conversation with Pinkie Pie convinces Tealove to go on a quest to obtain some magic tea leaves. Pinkie even offers some advice for the trip. By the end of the story, Tealove has the magic tea leaves, and she has to keep them out of the hooves of an evil cultist. The cultist is very, very strongly implied to be Pinkie Pie in a disguise. Amusingly, this twist came about completely by accident. The story was a Round Robin with no communication between the different authors—so the guy who wrote Pinkie as the cultist had no idea that she'd appeared earlier as the quest-giver.
- In the Black Crayons series, one of the installments A Child's Innocence has Sentinel Prime, Optimus Prime's mentor, revealed to be Evil All Along.
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has Quirrell/Voldemort who was one of the few adults Harry felt he could almost trust
Films — Animated
- Odin in Heavy Metal 2000 reveals himself to be one of the aliens responsible for creating the fountain of youth and to have been seeking its power all along after the death of the primary villain Tyler.
- Captain Korso in Titan A.E. is a rare example who goes to the trouble of searching out the not-yet-hero, convincing him to join their quest if only for a nicer place to live, inspiring him to believe in a cause other than his own self-interest or personal profit... and then revealing himself to have been working for the bad guys all along just for a big check.
- When Mike and Sully first uncover Randall's plot in Monsters, Inc., Sully tries going to their boss Mr. Waternoose for help. Five minutes later, he's asked them if anyone else knows about it and has banished them to the human world.
Mike: Oh, what a great idea going to your old pal Waternoose! Too bad he was in on the whole thing!
Films — Live-Action
- The main antagonist in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
- In Another 48 Hours, a Retcon makes Jack Cate's fellow officer and longtime friend Ben the Big Bad whom Reggie Hammond had robbed in the Back Story to the first film, and the one who has been feeding Jack misinformation all along.
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Both Walter Donovan and Dr. Elsa Schneider would qualify.
- Obadiah Stane from Iron Man. Not a big secret to those who know his history from the comics, but in the film, he founded Stark Industries with Tony's dad and pretends to be Stark's friend and mentor, but when the film begins, he pays to have Tony killed while on a trip showing off some of his new weapons (they don't, because they weren't told who he was). Later, he ends up building his own armor suit. Which he powers with the power source he pulls out of Tony's chest. Which was all that was keeping him alive.
- Lt. Neil Briggs (Hal Holbrook) in Magnum Force. His dismissal of Harry's Cowboy Cop methods is just him blowing smoke. He's a far more extreme Vigilante Man Killer Cop than Harry himself.
- Elijah Price in Unbreakable. Everything Elijah teaches David is so that he can be a great superhero and save people from other villains, but he has ulterior motives for guiding David on his journey. He wants David to be the hero so he has an enemy to fight and justify his role.
- The B-movies Full Contact (1992), Dragon Fire (1993) and Bloodfist 2050 (2005) all use exactly the same plot: a kickboxer who participates in the underground pit-fighting circuit in order to find the guy who has killed his brother. In each one, it turns out that the killer is the very guy who trained him.
- Watchmen adds shades of this to the relationship between Dan and Adrian, due to the fact that unlike in the graphic novel, they're close, affectionate friends in this version.
- Teddy Gammel in Memento. Complicated because his intentions aren't purely evil. While he's manipulating Lenny for his own purposes, he also does it to help Lenny function in daily life, and Lenny is also manipulating himself into killing innocent people just so he has a purpose in life. Teddy is a smug and greedy enabler, while Lenny is a willing Serial Killer... and tragically doesn't even remember it.
- Los Angeles Narcotics Detective Alonzo Harris from Training Day is THE poster boy of this trope.
- Palpatine is like a father to Anakin in the Star Wars prequel trilogy — he's also Darth kriffing Sidious.
- Lieutenant Howett in Carry On Jack. He hates being second-in-command to the wimpy Captain Fearless, who turns away from an opportunity to fight the enemy the best that he can. When Howett eventually loses his thread with him, he and the rest of the sailors on their voyage organise a fake mutiny (with "unconscious" sailors covered in jam/blood) to scare the captain away, and he wins. Unfortunately for him, Howett makes everything worse for the voyage, due to his greediness and Blood Knight mentality. Within at least 30 minutes of being in charge, the crew are arrested by the Spanish Armada and forced to work for them, in exchange for public execution.
- In WarCraft, when Medivh is fully under fel's influence, he convinces Llane that a rebellion among orcs is in full swing and that three legions will be enough to crush Gul'dan. He also pushes Lothar further into Sanity Slippage with some well-placed comments.
- In 2001: A Space Odyssey HAL 9000 is supposed to be omniscient guide for the rest of the Discovery crew, but after Frank Poole's death it is clear he no longer wants Dave alive.
Literature
- Leigh Teabing, the central villain (out of many candidates) in The Da Vinci Code.
- Saruman in the The Lord of the Rings books (and especially in the movies). Gríma Wormtongue also qualifies.
- Captain Dudley Smith in L.A. Confidential.
- Chauncy in The Dresden Files.
- This is also a big part of how the Fallen operate: If you pick up one of the Blackened Denarii you get an ancient, superintelligent and ridiculously powerful Spirit Advisor who'd be happy to show you how to solve any problem you run into — until you're so dependent on its help that it can control you completely.
- J.K. Rowling really likes this trope in the Harry Potter books.
- Professor Quirrel in Philosopher's Stone.
- Tom Riddle aka Young Voldemort in Chamber Of Secrets.
- Subverted in Prisoner of Azkaban when it looks like Lupin is one of these as well.
- Although not canon, many fanfiction writers speculate that Peter Pettigrew was the one who planted suspicions of Remus's loyalty in Sirius's mind.
- Alastor Moody (Barty Crouch, Jr. disguised as him, to be precise) in Goblet of Fire, whom Harry and co. frequently consult for help solving the mysteries.
- Half-Blood Prince makes it look like Snape is one, too, only to invert it in Deathly Hallows.
- In Boris Akunin's Fiction, we have Ivan Panteleevich, leader of an elite Soviet sports club. Sergei Dronov, one of the superpowered protagonists, was discovered and saved by him early in the book, and has followed "the Sensei's" advice ever since, leaving the life of crime and becoming a sports celebrity and a powerful businessman during the Perestroika. In the end, it turns out that the Sensei was working for the Government Conspiracy all along — and indeed is one of its leaders. What's more, Dronov remains loyal to him and is all too happy to join a secret superhero team for the conspiracy. To this we may add that, under the pseudonym of Alexander Aleksandrovich, he is also the father of another protagonist's daughter (becoming something of an advisor to him as well, though not nearly as trusted as in the first case), and brings that protagonist in as well, though he is more skeptical after being told the truth. Mind you, he's not necessarily evil, inasmuch as he seems to genuinely want to help Dronov and is mostly concerned with fighting off an alien conspiracy that runs counter to the government conspiracy.
- The Oracle of delphi in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is this trope, just as she was in Classical Mythology. Often she gives vague Exact Words style prophesies, or the heroes assume she's talking about one person, when she means another, after all she only speaks in prophesies, so she can't just tell them outright. after she is finally released from her Age Without Youth immortality and allowed to die, Apollo appoints Rachel Elizabeth Dare to be the new oracle. She still holds this position in The Heroes of Olympus.
- In The Winter Queen (an earlier Boris Akunin novel), there is Ivan Frantsevich Brilling, hero to and mentor of the protagonist, rookie detective Erast Fandorin. Fandorin is none too pleased to find out that Brilling is part of the evil conspiracy.
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms has several, including one who served Liu Bei but was tricked into serving Cao Cao; he refused to give meaningful advice from then on and kept his mouth shut when he saw through the ruse at Chi Bi. More importantly, it's the descendants of Sima Yi, Cao Cao's strategist, who ends up unifying the three kingdoms; one Cao son even gets murdered in broad daylight by the Sima clan.
- In The Kingdoms of Evil: De Macabre for certain, and possibly everyone else in Skrea.
- Dusk in Laini Taylor's Silksinger.
- From Provost's Guard in the Tortall Universe, Tunstall, though only for the second half of the final book. He didn't want it to go so far, but it got out of hand, quickly.
- A Mage's Power: For a good chunk of the story, Eric is a Heroic Host for the spirit of Dengel. He relies on the dead mage's advice and knowledge of magic to get out of scraps and accomplish goals. Then he finds out that Dengel is only bidding his time until he can take over Eric's body.
- Deltora Quest has a textbook example with Mother Brightly in its Tournament Arc, the Rithmere Games.
- In The Dragon Waiting, Gregory uncovers evidence of a conspiracy at the English court and takes it to the Duke of Buckingham — who, unfortunately for Gregory, is in on it.
"Your Grace." He reached into his bag, produced the translation of Mancini's letter. "We have a great deal of trouble. I hope that these are men you can trust."
"Yes, Professor, they are absolutely loyal to me," Buckingham said, and signaled for his men to close the door. - In The Dragon Hoard, the sorceress Maligna arranges to become one to the heroes in order to prevent their quest from succeeding.
- In The Spirit Thief, it eventually turns out that Lenette has been poisoning her queen for years and is in fact a Deep Cover Agent for the Immortal Empress.
Live-Action TV
- In the Doctor Who episode "Invasion of the Dinosaurs", Sarah Jane Smith falls victim to this trope twice. First, the man she sees for help finding the villains' base turns out to be the one who helped them set it up. Then, after she escapes from him, she takes what she knows to the general who is coordinating the state of emergency, not knowing that, while she was away, he had also been revealed as a member of the conspiracy.
- Game of Thrones: Many of Roose Bolton's moves become this in hindsight, such as sending the 500 men to Winterfell to supposedly take it back. They burn Winterfell in order to cover Roose's bases.
- From Heroes: Claire has been hiding from her father the fact that she heals incredibly fast. She finally can't take the pressure anymore and decides to tell him... and he tells her he already knows, and asks her whom else she's told. Subsequently, every person she mentions has their memories of it wiped, and Claire herself is targeted for a wipe.
- In an ironic twist, though, HRG was trying to protect Claire (and the others) by doing this.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Gwendolyn Post (played by Serena Scott Thomas), the dark magician who poses as Faith's new Watcher.
- "Doc" (played by Joel Grey), seems to be a strange but mostly harmless old sorcerer/demon willing to help Dawn out, but turns out to be the closest thing to The Dragon to Glory's Big Bad role in Season 5.
- Boyd Langton from Dollhouse
- The Flash: Dr. Wells turns out to be the Reverse Flash AKA the Man in Yellow. He is later revealed to be Eobard Thawne, who used a device to kill the real Dr. Wells and steal his identity.
- Digger in John Doe. However, Word of God is that it's a Red Herring (it's not Digger but an enemy after a plastic surgery).
- Harry Wolfe in Season 2, ep. 2 of Life On Mars.
- Subverted in "Aurora", an episode of Stargate Atlantis: When visiting the ruins of a ship that had the crew both in stasis and believing that they were still flying the vessel in a virtual reality setting, the second in command apparently was planning to do something against her boss. However, its later revealed that the actual second in command was killed long before the events of the episode by a Wraith, and a Wraith (presumably the same one that killed her) was impersonating her.
- Merlin has Agravaine as a good example of this. Arthur's uncle and advisor, as well as The Mole. Merlin and the rest eventually figure him out, but Arthur takes the longest to quit trusting him.
- Scandal: Cyrus, though he does have good intentions at times.
- Spooks, Series 7: Bernard Qualtrough, a retired MI5 spycatcher who Sir Harry Pearce calls on in the third episode, after realizing that Operation Sugarhorse, a plan to insert Western moles in high-ranking Russian government positions, is compromised. Harry has several meetings with him about likely suspects inside the Service who could be passing intel to the Russians, and he doesn't find out until the tail-end of episode five that Qualtrough himself is a long-term mole for them. By the next episode, Qualtrough has successfully framed Harry for the leak, in order to protect his real contact on the Grid — Connie James.
- In Legends of Tomorrow, Rip Hunter is revealed to have absconded with the Waverider against the orders of the Time Masters to try and stop Vandal Savage. His mentor then shows up and tries to convince Rip to go back, so the Time Masters can start repairing the damage to the timeline done by Rip and his team. Mick Rory, who has been listening in on the conversation, immediately tells him that the Time Master plans to betray and kill him, along with the rest of the team. Rip is reluctant to believe him, but he does bring backup during their next meeting. It turns out Mick was right. The Time Master shows up with the Bounty Hunter Chronos, who was paid to kill Rip and the others. Mick and Jax/Stein save him.
Professional Wrestling
- At the 2015 Guerra De Reyes, it was revealed all the problems faced by La Artillería Pesada in the World Wrestling League were caused by their manager, El Profe, who revealed this after he betrayed Thunder and Lighting to Jose Chaparro and Legion, handing Kronya and Spectro the tag team title belts.
Video Games
- The Elder in Terranigma. Also Yomi or dark side Yomi.
- From Assassin's Creed I Al-Mualim is not only a Templar himself, but the Big Bad.
- GLaDOS from Portal. "The Enrichment Center is required to remind you that you will be baked and then there will be cake."
- In both Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid, the player-hero receives advice via radio much of which is revealed to come from each respective game's Big Bad.
- In a variation, in three out of four Metal Gear Solid games, The Dragon, Revolver Ocelot, is advising and betraying the game's Big Bad on behalf of a singular third party. How does he keep getting away with this? Impressively.
- Subverted in Metal Gear Solid 4. Drebin was put in place by the Ancient Conspiracy...in order to help Snake defeat the Big Bad. He also makes it clear from the beginning that he works for everyone who can pay him, and is telling the truth when he says he won't betray his customers, Snake included. He even saves the man's life on occasion.
- In a variation, in three out of four Metal Gear Solid games, The Dragon, Revolver Ocelot, is advising and betraying the game's Big Bad on behalf of a singular third party. How does he keep getting away with this? Impressively.
- Final Fantasy X can be considered the apotheosis of the concept. The party's initial quest is a voyage to seek aid in destroying the monster Sin; the ultimate end of this quest is the spirit of Lady Yunalesca — who, in The Reveal, turns out to be an insane nihilist who has been complicit with Sin's cycle of reincarnation since the beginning, having offered her own husband as the first Final Aeon (which would also make him the second Sin). And the Maesters of Yevon are being advised on how to defeat Sin by Maester Seymour, in The ''other'' Reveal, turns out to be an insane nihilist who is plotting to merge with Sin so he can destroy all life on Spira.
- In the first Ratchet & Clank game, our heroes initially try to alert local superhero Captain Qwark to the Blargg threat, but discover that he's actually working with Chairman Drekk, who's offering him a substantial amount of money and fame for sponsoring their new homeworld.
- In the old C64 game Bard's Tale 2, the goal was to find the pieces of the Destiny Wand in order to defeat the big bad Lagoth Zanta. Every time you found a piece, you needed to get hints to the location of the next one by paying a character known as the sage. Once you assemble the wand, you discover that the sage was in fact Lagoth Zanta all along.
- Persona 2 features a variation; in both games, the Time Count provides useful services — ones that can't be gotten anywhere else in Eternal Punishment. He turns out to actually be an avatar of Nyarlathotep, the Big Bad. Unlike most examples, it's not part of some overarching scheme — being a trickster and manipulator, he decided it'd be more fun this way, and arrogantly believed that even if he helped them, the heroes couldn't possibly defeat him.
- In Persona 3, it turns out that Shuji Ikutsuki was actually trying to summon Nyx and end the world since long before the game even began, and that serving as the mentor for SEES was his way of using them as a weapon to accomplish this task. Without his own Persona, he had no way of defeating the Full Moon Shadows who needed to die in order to free Nyx, so he found some people who could get the job done, and...
- In BioShock, your guide throughout most of the game, former revolutionary figurehead Atlas, turns out to be mobster Frank Fontaine, who was thought dead according to the back story. You're a genetically-altered and hypnotically-conditioned assassin created by Fontaine as part of his scheme to seize control of Rapture from Andrew Ryan, and Atlas's Catch Phrase "Would you kindly..." was actually the command phrase to make you obey his orders.
- In Vexx, the player is given advice by an old mentor figure named Darby about finding the Wraithearts in order to eventually defeat the Big Bad. Of course, Darby actually IS the Big Bad with the Evil Plan.
- Ultima VII plays with this a bit by linking it to a Chain of Deals. In order to contact the Time Lord, whose help is necessary to stop the Guardian from dominating Britannia, you need to get help from the Wisps — interdimensional information-brokers who, in exchange for the help, want you to acquire information for another client of theirs. The information in question is a notebook on the Guardian and his puppet church, the Fellowship, composed by one of the few Britannian scholars aware of the Guardian's existence. Turns out, their client is the Guardian, who, having found out what his opposition knows about him, then has him murdered.
- Fire Emblem:
- In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, the high-ranked Paladin Orson leads Prince Ephraim and his group into a direct trap, having betrayed his country since the enemy promised to revive his deceased wife.
- In Radiant Dawn, Izuka combines this with Evil Chancellor and tricks naive Prince Pelleas into selling out his country to the greedy Begnion senators. Those same Senators, in turn, betray and attempt to murder their own Empress for passing policy they don't approve of. Except for Sephiran, her closest and most trusted advisor and guardian... who betrays her for a different reason.
- Exaggerated in Fire Emblem Awakening, Chrom randomly introduces a never mentioned character with a re-colored Mook design, the Hierarch, in chapter 7. Chrom says the Hierarch was his elder sister Emmeryn's advisor and caretaker when she was young. Less then a Minute after this, the Hierarch walks over unseen to the enemy commander, tells him he led Emmeryn and her friends into an ambush, the enemy commander then rewards him with death. This event, and the Hierarch are both never mentioned again, which becomes odd as the characters never learn he betrayed them in the first place, but just forget about him.
- In Tales of the Abyss, Van, the main character's mentor and pseudo-father figure, aids the party and provides advice and counsel to the main character for the first third of the game. He then not only betrays the party and leaves them to die, but also turns out to be the Big Bad. He manages to rub even more salt in the wound by casually telling the main character that, in fact, Van created him to be nothing more than an inferior duplicate of one his minions, to be sacrificed as a pawn in his plot to destroy the world. Ouch. The fact that Van turns out to be more of a Necessarily Evil villain never alleviates the bitter sting of this personal betrayal.
- Subversion in Super Robot Wars Original Generation, especially on Mizal Touval, the Shura Advisor (because, he is not on the player's side all the time). He actually had plans on his own, that is to overthrow the Big Bad and usurp his power on his own. But he never got lucky in his endeavor, because: He either gets killed before he could pull the treachery off (Compact 3), or said Big Bad is dead first, and his successor killed him before he could do anything else (Original Generation Gaiden).
- In Unreal II: The Awakening, the main character's rather paternal commanding officer sends him on a Fetch Quest to assemble Plot Coupons, ostensibly under orders from The Federation to keep it out of the hands of the Always Chaotic Evil Skaarj. It turns out he just wants the assembled Artifact of Doom for himself to take over the universe.
- In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, in the first case, the eponymous attorney is working under Kristoph Gavin, who serves as his co-counsel in this case. Kristoph turns out to be the murderer. Then in the fourth case he turns out to be the Big Bad of the whole game.
- Castlevania
- Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia has Barlowe teaching Shanoa how to use glyphs and such, so she can use the Dominus glyph to destroy an artifact that, when destroyed, will allegedly destroy Dracula. He keeps secret from her two things: that using Dominus will kill the user (you can even use it and die in regular gameplay, once you have all three parts), and that destroying said artifact, in actuality, will bring about the return of Dracula and his castle, which was his goal all along.
Barlowe: How dare you... even forget... who raised you... you... STUPID DISCIPLE!- Zead of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness also qualifies as a Treacherous Advisor. At first, he is seen giving Hector helpful hints and advice in his quest to get revenge on Isaac for killing his wife. Naturally, St. Germain knows what Zead's true purpose is, thus why the two are enemies with one another as Germain himself tries to stop Hector from going after Isaac and therefore playing any more of his role in Zead's plans. Eventually, it is revealed that Zead was using Hector to find a perfect host for the resurrection of Dracula, and that, indeed, Zead was Death, The Dragon to Dracula himself, in disguise.
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow had Zobek, not put in spoilers because the cast is ever so small, who else could it be? He turns out to be one of the eponymous Lords of Shadow and heavily implied to be Death, but before he can usurp the mask's powers SATAN kills him.
- In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, the aforementioned Zobek is confirmed to be Death.
- In System Shock 2, the voice of Dr. Janice Polito is played by very special guest star... SHODAN.
- Princess Waltz features a really disturbing one, when the dizzy, cute, Harem Nanny April turns out to be stone cold evil... and doesn't change her mannerisms or expression!
- Or not. Ending suggests she was good all along, and possibly the heroes strongest ally. She might have been lying, of course, she was certainly capable of that.
- Your boss, Mr. Jones in Code Name: Viper is actually the guy behind the South American drug ring you've been commissioned to stop.
- In Mantra, the plot of the game is that Saric (the player character) is supposed to retrieve the Mantras of fire, earth, water, air, and force to help out his master, the Ambassador, in his negotiations with the evil magician Balther. Late in the game, however, you find out that the Ambassador is actually Balther.
- Subverted by Mr. Mach in Rockman.EXE 6, as he is not truly treacherous. After Rockman is lured into a trap by WWW (World Three) and kidnapped, several members decide to betray WWW and start up their own organization, taking Rockman with them. He then arranges a meeting with Netto to explain that he has actually been working for WWW in order to repay a favor from a higher-ranking member, his involvement in the near burning of the school during the first day, and that he helped kidnap Rockman before finding out about the traitors. Mr. Mach then tells Netto where Rockman might currently be, verbally beats himself up for being a hypocrite, and asks for forgiveness before leaving.
- The original Mercenaries has Josef oust Sergei as leader of the Mafia near the end of the game; probably not all that surprising, since 1) this is The Mafiya we're talking about, 2) Sergei is an airheaded Small Name, Big Ego, 3) Josef is ex-KGB, and 4) Sergei tried to have the player character and Josef taken out by the North Koreans first, which obviously failed 5) they foreshadow the hell out it by showing Josef having practically undisguised contempt for Sergei's bumbling and snotty attitude.
- In Bunny Must Die! Chelsea and the 7 Devils, Bunny, upon receiving her curse, meets up with a fat messenger of God (read: Dechronos) who offers to lead her to the Cave of the Seven Devils to remove said curse — and gets gored by a stag shortly upon their arrival. By the time she's slagged all the other devils and beaten Chelsea to a pulp, she finds him, fresh as a daisy, and he tells her that he set the plant to blow once she was near it. All of this just to give her a reason to get him all his power back.
- King Lemele in The 7th Saga. Or, rather, the Big Bad Gorsia, who had already killed Lemele and was impersonating him when the game started.
- In Modern Warfare 2, General Shepherd, the main US Army commander, is The Chessmaster and ultimate Big Bad, having manipulated the massive invasion of Washington DC and the war between the US and Russia to demonstrate the US's military might as revenge for having 30,000 of his troops nuked in the first Modern Warfare.
- Kor in Jak II: Renegade is the Metal Head Leader.
- Sindri Myr to Chaos Lord Bale in Dawn of War, leading to one of the most narm-filled moments outside of the Soulstorm expansion.
- In Ōkami, you wind up consulting High Priestess Rao for help fixing the cursed mess that is Sei-an City and the Ryoshima Coast. Too bad she'd been killed months earlier, and you turn out to have been dealing with Demon Lord Ninetails, who was responsible for a lot of it and had been trying to use you as a Macguffin Delivery Service for the Fox Rods or, failing that, get you killed. It works pretty dang well, too, and only some very quick thinking and a Heroic Sacrifice on Queen Himiko's part allow Ammy to stop Ninetails.
- In Psychonauts, Coach Oleander is the real Big Bad behind Doctor Loboto.
- In Wario Land 3, Wario gets advice from a sealed away mysterious figure, who will apparently give him riches and power if released. But sadly for him, it turns out this figure is actually Rudy the Clown, a Monster Clown who conquered said pocket universe the game is set in, and transformed all the people into monsters.
- In Sacrifice, Mithras, a blind prophet and benevolent advisor to the gods is revealed to be Eldritch Abomination Marduk in a cunning disguise.
- In The Settlers 7 campaign, Princess Zoe is sent by her father to save the kingdom of Tandria from the evil Lord Wolverine who usurped the good King Balderus. She is assisted by a kind old barkeep who is actualy King Balderus in disguise. As added insult to injury, Wolverine usurped Balderus because he was a Tyrant and Balderus told Zoe that she was helping to free the people from Wolverine's evil rule.
- Many of these in Alpha Protocol, but the gold medal goes to the entire staff of the eponymous agency. There's no mole; everyone was complicit in the decision to abandon and kill you in Saudi Arabia.
- Well, actually, there was a mole. Said mole was a mole against the entire remaining staff and saved your life by declaring you rogue and thus forcing you to fight the agency and Halbech.
- In Dark Star One, Robert give Kayron his father's eponymous ship and sends him on his quest. In the end, he turns out to be Kayron's father's killer.
- In Asura's Wrath, the Golden Spider offers Asura cryptic advice several times in the game while he is in Naraku to aid him in his battle against the Deities. The Spider is actually the Bigger Bad behind the rise of the Gohma (and consequently the Deities' villainy as well) which was apparently a test of the Deities' worthiness to wield Mantra, and he's only aiding Asura because he wants to claim Mithra as his vessel and is grooming him to be his heir.
- Luigi has an offscreen adventure in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door where he collects the pieces of The Marvelous Compass to rescue Princess Eclair under Minister Crêpe's guidence. Minister Crêpe reveals himself to be an Evil Chancellor who set up the princess's kidnapping to make Luigi rebuild the compass for his own nefarious purposes.
- Lloyd is one of these in The Legend of Dragoon, posing as an advisor to King Albert while secretly working for Emperor Doel, though this is only a secret to the characters; the player learns of Lloyd's deception in the very first cutscene in the game.
- Ghaleon in Lunar: The Silver Star, who turns out to be the Big Bad.
- A variation in Pokémon Black and White: Since the theme of the game is Gray and Gray Morality, the main antagonist N is the hero whose advisor turns out to have been using him all along, rather than the player character.
- In the first Bookworm Adventures game, Professor Codex appears to be happy to help Lex the bookworm rescue Cassandra the oracle. However, Lex learns that the Big Bad who kidnapped Cassandra wasn't Dracula, as Codex told him, but Professor Codex himself, who used his imprisonment of Cassandra (and Dracula's apparent kidnapping of him) to maneuver Lex into fighting the books' monsters and unknowingly breaking the chains of fiction that kept them in the books. Thanks to Lex doing such a great job with these monsters, Codex can now control them as his minions. Fortunately, he gets a final boss battle to set things right.
- In Suikoden I, one of the first characters to join you is Cool Old Guy Sanchez, one of the members of La Résistance under Odessa. He generally comes across as a fairly unremarkable Smart Non-Action Guy, right up until the point he, well, lands himself on this page by revealing he was reporting to the Emperor the whole time.
- Amethos from Unlucky Hero seeks to kill off the younger princess of the kingdom, so that he can marry the ruling princess and take over. This happens in basically the first ten minutes of the game, so it's not really a spoiler.
- After his defeat, Lord Tourma fakes a Heel–Face Turn and acts as advisor. No one's fooled, except Princess Christel.
- Glade from Beyond the Beyond, full stop. His character portrait makes him look so transparently evil that the only people who probably didn't see it coming were under the age of 10, or maybe it was their first RPG or something. Bonus points for him losing his shit and transforming into a monster before the also-obvious boss battle.
- In RuneScape's "Rune Mysteries" quest, Ariane's kindly and supportive mentor Wizard Ellaron has been stringing her along in order to use her to blow up the Wizards' Tower.
- One of the Signature Heroes, Retired Badass Xenia, is in her own mind a Trickster Sink-or-Swim Mentor. To the player's perspective (and likely that of other characters involved), she's a treacherous advisor who places total strangers into certain peril in hopes that an adventurer (usually another total stranger) might step up and save them. She insists that she would be able to save the "victim" should the "rescue" attempt go wrong...
- Pony Island: Subverted. The Daemons tell you the Hopeless Soul isn't to be trusted, and if you collect all the tickets...he still does absolutely nothing to seem he isn't on the up-and-up, he just decides to become the True Final Boss to give a satisfying conclusion to the completionist run.
- Played straight, actually. After you beat the game then tamper certain variables in the save file, come back into the game and hit continue will lead you to a screen where the typical 'devil head' sprite will appear blue and talk first with the sound effect of Lucifer, berating the player messing with game files, but afterwards switching to the sound......of the Lost Soul. Then it will let you in on a secret — sometimes he talks "in different voices", and he asks you to "not to tell dad".
- In World of Warcraft the troll Yeh'kinya guided players through deciphering a prophecy about the return of Hakkar the Soulflayer and how to seal him away. Under his guidance players confronted the weakened soul of Hakkar and sealed it in an ancient vessel, supposedly to bind him. In fact Yeh'kinya knew that sealing Hakkar into the vessel was a necessary step to allow his rebirth, leading to Hakkar's rise in Zul'gurub.
- Drakuru in Grizzly Hills seems like a reasonable troll compared to his bloodthirsty kin so helping him in fighting them off seems like the smart move. In fact his directions resulted in the trolls losing control of their main defense against the Scourge, hastening their empire's fall and gaining Drakuru praise from the Lich King.
- Wrathion became this for Horde players in Mists of Pandaria. He sent them to defeat Garrosh to "save the Horde" while fully believing the Alliance would subsequently subjugate it. He's rather dismissive of whatever complaints the player might have had about being used.
- On the Timeless Isle Kairoz had players empower his Vision of Time to see visions of the future if either the Horde or Alliance proved victorious. In a subsequent novel Kairoz used the Visions to allow Garrosh's escape to Draenor, intent on using the Vision to build an army across multiple timelines.
Theater
- In Pippin, the Lead Player is deliberately guiding Pippin down a path that is supposed to end with Pippin's dramatic suicide.
Webcomics
- Miranda West in The Wotch may qualify for this, given that she's keeping some very big secret from protagonist Anne and that she's willing to totally destroy the lives of a few people in order to make sure nobody interferes.
- Panthera has Reynder/Ari, who turns out to be Oosterhuis.
- In Pibgorn, a succubus can see that our heroes still find him useful
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- Nicodemus, the Big Bad of The Dreamland Chronicles got his start as one of these. Notably, he actually told his liege in advance that he would betray him, though he made it clear that he would only do so if his liege continued what Nicodemus considered to be a self-destructive policy. His liege didn't stop. Nicodemus was true to his word.
Western Animation
- In Exo Squad, Barca plays this role in his attempts to get Halis to assassinate Simbacca.
- In the Men in Black Animated Adaptation, Kay's first partner and mentor Alpha turned out to be a scheming bastard. When Kay refused to join him, Alpha shot him and left him for dead. It's no wonder Kay became an emotionless robot after that.