Good All Along

It's a common literary conceit to have Mooks that are so persistently evil that heroes can freely slaughter them, or at least beat the stuffing out of them. Subversions are usually on a case-by-case basis, and rarely justify recategorizing the race as a whole as neutral. That means it's time for a deconstruction!

Some authors will throw us a twist and reveal that these guys aren't naturally evil... or at least, there's a whole lot of them out there, and we've only seen the bad apples. This can take many forms:
 * The mooks encountered are actually a rebel faction of a larger, more heterogeneous culture/species
 * They are pressed into the ranks -- Evil Overlord may simply coerce them with threats, or
 * They may be under a Villain Override as a species, making them an evil Hive Mind,
 * Their boss knows something you don't and they're fighting for a greater good that also involves killing you,
 * They are dark but not evil, and are being forced to ally with the villain for protection,
 * They are well-meaning, but either party had the first contact Gone Horribly Wrong due to being too clumsy or alien for another,
 * They're all Gullible Lemmings whose only crime is believing the Villain with Good Publicity,
 * At worst, they're Well Intentioned Extremists who believe Utopia Justifies the Means (and the Big Bad just so happens to have lied to them about the "utopia" part).

Whatever the case, these Mooks are not worth less than a normal person, and will gladly perform a Heel Face Turn or go and live a peaceful life if given the chance.

Given that this trope involves revealing something contrary to what the viewer is initially expected to assume, most examples are spoilers.

Related to My Species Doth Protest Too Much, where, it turns out the Planet of Hats has a lot more diversity than it first seemed to. See also Minion with an F In Evil, Mook Face Turn, and The Man Behind the Monsters. Compare Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain. Compare and Contrast Evil All Along. May result in a Face Heel Turn (but that barely ever happens).

Anime and Manga

 * Naruto has an interesting example of this.  is by no means fooled into thinking he's working for the greater good or threatened into fighting for the big bads. He just wants to.
 * Well, there was the whole "prevent another ninja war by  but by the time of the series he's almost certainly realized how much of that was Danzo manipulating him.
 * Probably not. The kid had been through ROOT training and was in ANBU, and Danzo suffers no backtalk. Plus, it's a dumb way to stop a rebellion, but a great way to cut out your longtime political opponents at no risk to yourself.
 * Beastmen in Gurren Lagann are introduced as an Exclusively Evil race, but after their evil overlord is defeated by the heroes, they're revealed to be perfectly capable of peaceful co-existence with humans.
 * The Hades chapter of Saint Seiya revealed the previously completely evil Spectres were lied to, and they thought Hades, lord of the dead, would end the world to bring about a paradise where everyone was immortal and there was no suffering. As it turns out, Hades has this sort of vaguely defined distaste and loathing for the living in general and humans in particular, and wants to freeze the world to death pretty much just because. It's unclear whether his Spectres would have survived or if he had any loyalty towards his minions to begin with. In the end, the last six or so Spectres rush one of the heroes, Ikki, saying they'll fight him to help Lord Hade's vision. He kills them of course, but you feel somewhat sorry for them.
 * Kurumada drove the point home by having Thanatos channel General Ripper, stating that they don't give a damn about the Spectres, calling them mere "slaves", and saying him and Hypnos could fully do the job themselves.
 * The vampires in Trinity Blood. They get fleshed out throughout the anime as being just like humans, except with different dietary needs and a longer lifespan, and it's revealed that the Rosencruez vampires are terrorists who are trying to instigate an all-out war between humans and vampires, with no concern for the massive casualties that would befall both sides.
 * Magic Knight Rayearth's first Big Bad, Zagato, who has kidnapped the princess and is destroying the world? Turns out the princess kidnapped herself so she could try to stop loving Zagato, and the destruction that's going on is the result of her inner turmoil.
 * Debatable. He may have been motivated by love and disgust for the corrupt system his world ran on, but he still did some things that are hard to describe as anything but evil, including trying to kill the Magic Knights (who are the only true innocents in the entire story and likely would have at least been sympathetic if he even tried to explain things), manipulating and lying to Ascot so he would be a loyal minion, dissolving Alcione for her failures in the manga, etc.
 * Yukimi from Nabari no Ou looked like a typical Mook in his first appearance. Boy, were we wrong...
 * The black knights in 11eyes tried to kill Kakeru and his companions because they fear the Voidstone fragments within all of them will unseal the Big Bad evil witch Liselotte Werckmeister. Kakeru was surprised and said "They are actually the good guys??" upon learning the truth from Shiori.
 * Dr. Franken von Vogler in Giant Robo. Made out to be a mad scientist responsible for a giant catastrophe 10 years ago by ignoring all risks and his fellow scientists in the experiment with the Shizuma Drive, it eventually turns out that he was the only one who opposed the project and the seemingly "good professor" was among the people who wanted to go through with it. All 5 of the inventors survived, but Vogler was believed to be dead, so the remaining 4 decided to cover the whole incident in lies and put all the blame on Vogler. Really no wonder why the Big Bad wants revenge.
 * Laxus Dreyar in Fairy Tail. His attempt to take over the guild is nothing more than a teenage temper tantrum fueled by fear that he wasn't getting the proper credit for his accomplishments, always being compared to his grandfather (who is also the guildmaster).
 * Laxus Dreyar in Fairy Tail. His attempt to take over the guild is nothing more than a teenage temper tantrum fueled by fear that he wasn't getting the proper credit for his accomplishments, always being compared to his grandfather (who is also the guildmaster).

Comic Books

 * In El Eternauta, we discover that
 * I Kill Giants has the

Film

 * In the '80s animated film Fire and Ice there's a race of Neanderthal-like humanoids. They do the bidding of the evil sorceress and her son, and are pretty brutal about their business. However towards the middle of the movie one them gets injured a hell of a lot, while pursuing the escaped beautiful princess, and is literally limping towards her out of sheer willpower. While she kills it, you can't help but feel sorry for him, trying so hard and through such pain (then again, the sorceress is pretty brutal). After the sorceress and her son are beaten, the hero wants to kill a random survivor Neanderthal but the same princess stops him. She tells him now it's time to forgive them, since without the sorceress they're basically harmless.
 * The alternate ending of the recent I Am Legend movie had Robert Neville discover the ghouls were people despite being victims of a Viral Transformation. The lead ghoul not only learned to adopt Robert's tactics against him, but was only attacking him because he had kidnapped his girlfriend/wife/mate to try and see if his newest cure was working. The revelation causes a near Heroic BSOD as he looks at the wall of ghouls he'd killed trying to "cure" them. This is similar to the ending of the book and first film, in which a good many vampires/zombies were still fully sentient, just nocturnal, so Robert had been murdering innocent people along with the mindless zombies.
 * In fact, it was the whole point: they executed him at the end, because to their society he'd become this terrible, daywalking monster that slaughters people with ruthless efficiency. Legendary.
 * Robert realize this, and that's the reason why he took the suicide pill.
 * In The Matrix the resistance slaughters fellow human beings left and right. While it may be justified when dealing with Agent-possessed people, there's no excuse for gunning down dozens of security officers or such reckless driving as we witness.
 * Morpheus makes this very clear in the first film: anyone who is not part of the resistance is a part of the Matrix, and as such, is a danger. Both on their own and because they can potentially become Agents.
 * That's pretty flimsy justification. Those people they're killing are still sentient humans, until the Agents possess them. The excuse is that most people "can't handle" being removed from the Matrix, but that ignores the possibility of defeating the machines *and* keeping the Matrix running, which would be a much more practical goal than the goal they're pursuing.
 * The armed band of natives in The Ruins. From the point of view of the protagonists, they're murderous villains; but in the big picture, the protagonists really shouldn't be allowed to leave the ruins alive.

Literature
"Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead!"
 * In a way, several of the alien races of Animorphs would fit this: The Hork-Bajir are physically living weapons, and all of them seen initially are Yeerk hosts, so they seem pretty violent. The actual species though were/are peaceful vegetarians.
 * The Taxxons also seem pretty evil, but they can't help their ravenous hunger.
 * To elaborate, because the Taxxons are such a good example of this trope: They're originally introduced as Exclusively Evil even without the Yeerks. While most controllers were taken forcibly, the Taxxons as a race accepted willingly. Then along comes The Andalite Chronicles revealing that there's been a Taxxon resistance movement all along. And at the end of the series.
 * Probably the best example are the Howlers, who commit savage murders and have wiped out other species. When the main characters morph them, they find that they are playful like dolphins, raised (they were created by an evil Sufficiently Advanced Alien to wipe out peaceful species) to think it's all a game and don't realize their actions are wrong. The species have a Hive Mind, and so when the heroes managed to "contaminate" it with their own memories, it's implied that the entire race abandons their violent ways.
 * The Yeerks themselves are the main villain race, and for the first eighteen books we have little or no reason to doubt that they are Exclusively Evil. Then in book #19, Cassie meets a Yeerk who turns out to actually have a conscience, and find out that the Yeerks have their own La Résistance who opposes the Yeerks' invasion (which came as a total surprise to Cassie).
 * Though Yeerks as people started as early as #6, when 'Temrash 114' dying  was treated as an emotional and traumatic experience which got at his personal history and legitimate fear of death without compromising his status as a total bastard.
 * ...Animorphs actually had some really good stuff for kids' pulp fiction, huh?
 * In the Eternal Champions series, Ekrose (an incarnation of Elric) goes to war against the Eldren. He finds this trope applies to them, is torn by his loyalties but in the end
 * The Buggers in Ender's Game.
 * And later on, the Piggies in Speaker for the Dead.
 * Not that they were ever just 'the enemy' from a narrative perspective; it was obvious there was some kind of reason for what they'd done quite apart from malice and the problem was the comprehension gap, even when speaking the same language.
 * In The Inheritance Cycle, The Urgals only seem Exclusively Evil because they've been brainwashed by The Dragon, Durza. They do a Heel Face Turn as a species after his death.
 * That and humans/elves/dragon riders slaughtered them on sight without checking to see what was going on. Less of a case of Good All Along and more a What the Hell, Hero?.
 * Noghri in Star Wars Expanded Universe were first introduced as evil mooks serving The Empire Remnant. When Leia found out that they were, in fact, manipulated by Palpatine into serving him, they reject their former allegiance and join the good guys.
 * To an extent, the Yuuzhan Vong. They're introduced as Exclusively Evil fanatics, but it gradually turns out that the fanaticism is deliberately instilled in them by their corrupt (and largely insane) leadership to create more pliant minions . Once this starts coming out, a lot of Vong start turning against their leaders. Then there were the Shamed Ones, who were little more than oppressed slaves and were treated sympathetically from their introduction.
 * The flying monkeys and Winkies in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The flying monkeys served the Wicked Witch because she had an artifact that bound them to grant three wishes, and the Winkies served her because they were afraid of her.


 * In The Silver Chair, the creatures dwelling in the Underland seem like terrifying monsters, but they've been bewitched by the Lady of the Green Kirtle. Once she's dead, they're horrified by the notion that they might have invaded the frigid, exposed surface world and happily go back down to their magma tunnels.
 * in Robert Anton Wilson's The Masks of Illuminati. He is made out to be the Big Bad of the novel, but all his crimes happen off-screen, and it turns out they didn't happen at all; either him in disguise, or his lackeys simply lied to the protagonist about them. His aim is to illuminate the protagonist by blowing his mind, as well as a benevolent equivalent of For the Evulz-thinking.
 * from the Harry Potter series. Turns out everything he did in the books, he did while working for Dumbledore and following his orders, which includes, and all in the name of
 * When she is introduced in the ninth Haruhi Suzumiya novel,  is set up to appear as the title character's Evil Counterpart. However, it turns out that she really had no idea what was actually going on, and had no idea that , and when the Masquerade gets broken for her,   secretly allies with Kyon to oppose those who wish to cause Haruhi harm.

Live-Action TV

 * In Alias the people working for the Big Bad thought they were a secret section of the CIA. The Reveal to that came in the 1st episode though, so I'm not sure if it would qualify.
 * The reveal then came with Sydney alone, who continued to have to work with the members of SD 6 who genuinely thought they were good guys. The reveal for them didn't come until partway through the second season.
 * The Cylons in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. As the show progresses, both the humans and the viewers begin seeing that the Cylons aren't merely soulless machines, but complex sentient beings.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel plays this one for laughs. Earlier seasons have all demons as Card-Carrying Villain Monsters of the Week who would go on a rampage then be killed by the heroes. In later seasons there are short glances into demon "society" where we meet "civilian" demons who are, well, maybe not "good", but are at least portrayed as merely working schlubs like you or me who are just trying to mind their own business and who don't seem to require human as part of their dietary intake. Not to be confused with the many Banality of Evil villains in Angel, who really are Complete Monsters but in a unglamourous Punch Clock Villain way.
 * There are also demons who are good, plain and simple, on the side of the Powers That Be in the eternal struggle. Angel manages to kill a couple of them in his own series, since there are no obvious tells for goodness. Since there seems to be no angel-equivalents in the Buffyverse, demons have to play both sides.
 * Also folks like Whistler, who works for the Powers That Be but is kind of an asshole. Angel is good but also an asshole a lot. The PT Bs are also not very considerate. Ever.
 * In Doctor Who, the Slitheen, who tried to wipe out the human race, turn out to be not at all typical of their species; their aggression against Earth would earn them the death penalty if they ever went back home. Additionally, it turned out that the species were the Raxacoricofallapatorians; the Slitheen were just a single criminal family.
 * Also in The Curse of Peladon, the Ice Warriors turn out to be among the good guys. In previous stories, they had been the villains.
 * The Others in Lost. For the first three seasons, they're the show's main antagonists and seem pure evil. In Season 4, they team up with the survivors to battle a greater threat. By the end of the series, it's clear that they were never really the enemy in the first place. Their methods just leave a lot to be desired.

Videogames

 * Unless they're an Orc, chances are the Beastmen in Final Fantasy XI simply have some really bad differences with the player races:
 * None of the Beastmen willingly wanted a part in the Crystal War. The Shadow Lord either forced them or tricked them into fighting for him.
 * Bastok's conflict with the Quadav is because Bastok keeps taking over, mining, polluting, and outright keeps destroying the Quadav's homes, leading to the Quadav going all out to protect their home. Of course, the players themselves know from the get-go that Bastok needs it's mining to stay a solid nation, and with both sides having people that don't know the meaning of the words "peace and compromise", it's one of the Grayest conflicts in the entire game.
 * The Paper Mario Series, which just loves to deconstruct its parent series, contains large numbers of nice goombas, koopas and other enemies.
 * Everyone in the Touhou series.
 * The Liberation Front in Deus Ex were revealed to be the good guys less than half-way through the story, vindicating the players who stuck with non-lethal force to fight them. Of course there's still recurring examples of how good the people of the original organization were, so the Triads and MJ12 were introduced for the player to spend their live ammo on guilt-free.
 * Similarly, the Scions in Battlezone 2 are actually Phlebotinum Rebels. The player is offered a chance to join them halfway through the story.
 * The demon world of Formido Heim from Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier. They started a bloody war with a neighboring world ten years ago, and appear to be up to no good again when their elite task force starts showing up in other worlds. This doesn't stop the random encounters with Formido Heim's denizens, possibly because they didn't actually know that they were Good All Along.
 * In Tales of Symphonia, Fantastic Racism sets half-elves up this way at first: humans view half-elves as cruel, greedy oppressors, because the most prominent group of them - the Desians - is exactly that. However, it's gradually revealed that a) most half-elves join the Desians because humans have a tendency to do things like burn their villages and slaughter their families, and the Desians are their chance to fight back and gain the upper hand, and b) there are a number of half-elves who disagree with the Desians, and are really just trying to live peaceful lives, hampered by racism from the humans. And that's before the fake ending and subsequent plot twists...
 * Later, another group is revealed, the Renegades, who are another variant of this trope. They look just like Desians so that their activities remain hidden from the Big Bad, but they're actually fighting back against the Desians' plans. And you, if you get in their way. Their ultimate goal is to save the world, and as far as they're concerned, they don't need some Idiot Hero mucking that up.
 * One quest in World of Warcraft requires you to kill a seemingly random mook, who then drops (as loot) an unsent letter to her father revealing that she was blackmailed into service in the evil organization, and was trying to sabotage it from inside. The NPC you turn in the letter to comforts you, saying that "there is no way you could have known".
 * In fact, during the first two games of the Warcraft franchise, it was not known that the Orcs were under the control of demonic magic. Later Retcons revealed that they were a peaceful race before being turned into something almost like the Legions of Hell, and after the demonic taint wore off, they were left as more of a Proud Warrior Race.
 * In Mass Effect 2,.
 * In the first game, you run across a.
 * Amazingly enough, it turns out, in Starcraft II that
 * That's one Alternate Character Interpretation, anyway. With what little information was given so far, it could just as easily have been that
 * In the UFO: After Blank series, it's revealed that the aliens that nearly destroyed humanity in the first game are actually a rebellious faction of the Reticulan race. They wanted to try creating a gigantic supercomputer brain, and the rest of their species said no. The rebellious Reticulans then split from their race and destroyed Earth. This is all just interesting backstory until the UFO Afterlight, when the non-evil Reticulans show up and propose an alliance with the remnants of humanity in an attempt to tame Mars. Of course, they will still try to screw you over, taking some of the most resource rich territories on planet, but attempting to kill them is much more difficult due to their significantly more powerful technology.
 * Ash Crimson from King of Fighters series. Watch the ending of KOF XIII.
 * Turns out that motivated by purely good intentions in Golden Sun 1.
 * in Super Smash Brothers Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode, King Dedede spends most of the story trying to take fighters that have been turned into trophies.
 * Of course, the fact that a major cutscene revealing why he did this (in which he's present while Meta Knight's ship gets stolen) got removed in the final cut does complicate this. With that said, Dedede acting like a dick for no reason would still be quite in character for him.
 * The Vortigaunts are enemies in the original Half Life, but at the end of that game you free them from their mind control and they become allies to humanity.
 * King's Quest IV: Edgar may look like a deformed little green hunchback, but he does plead with Lolotte to spare Rosella, gives her the means to escape (attached to a red rose), and doesn't grieve overmuch after Rosella kills Lolotte with a love arrow. It's just easy to miss as the poor fellow's too shy to speak up for himself.
 * In Knights of the Old Republic The Sith Lords, you will meet a man named in Dantooine, speaking with a deep, grave voice, having dark features and is involved with the mercenaries who is harassing the settlement. It turns out that he was spying against the mercenaries.
 * Luigi's Mansion 3: After Luigi defeats King Boo for the third time, he discovers that the lesser ghosts in the hotel (I.E. the ghosts that weren't members of Hellen's staff) were under his control the entire time. As the ghosts are upset about their hotel being destroyed (it ended up falling apart as a side effect of Luigi's final battle with King Boo), Professor E. Gadd, Mario, Peach, Luigi, and the three Toads work with them to rebuild it. They see them off as they get ready to take their leave.

Web Comics
"Roy: Wait, so you, a fellow paladin of the Sapphire Guard, don't like Miko either? Hinjo: Let's just say there's a reason Miko gets picked for long missions. In foreign countries. Which keep her away from home for months at a time. What, you didn't think all paladins were like her, did you?"
 * In Order of the Stick, after an overly abrasive and zealous Miko takes the Order to Azure City, it's revealed that she is the only paladin that acts this way:


 * In another arc they meet some Good goblins. It turns out they're teenagers who became good to hack off their Exclusively Evil parents. Unfortunately, one of them grows out of it in time to betray them.
 * Then there is this page, where La Résistance finds a hobgoblin among the freed prisoners, who says he is Good All Along because he hates (regular) goblins, including Redcloak. Subverted though, as the elves are Genre Savvy enough to assume he is a Fake Defector, and just kill him. We will never know what the truth is, but, especially in light of more recent events, we can assume that he was.
 * In El Goonish Shive, Grace's brothers are of the "coerced/threatened" variety, since they are ruled by the iron fist of their powerful and abusive guardian, Damien. When Hedge kidnaps Elliot, he reveals that he's only doing it because he can't find Grace, and because Damien said he would kill him if he didn't bring someone back. He also gets hit by Damien for lying to him and disobeying orders. When Elliot's friends arrive to save him, Hedge tries to make them to leave before Damien finds out they're there. The worst thing Guineas does is guard Elliot, and his way of participating in the fight with Elliot's friends is by having a thumb war with one of them. Vlad initially appears to be at least somewhat sympathetic to Damien's mindset: He is confrontational towards Hedge, he willingly goes after Grace when he sees her arrive, and when Damien subdues her, he says, "I never like to see her hurt, but she brought it upon herself." He also is the one who alert's Damien to the presence of Elliot's friends, and ends up being the most vicious fighter against them. However, this all turns out to be a combination of lip-service to Damien and resentment for being unable to transform into a human.

Web Originals

 * In The Gamers Alliance, the Sirithai are introduced at the beginning of the Vanna arc as violent human-eating monsters but are later revealed to be misunderstood victims of persecution from the Clergy of Artemicia which was manipulating the Grand Alliance to get rid of them. They still won't hesitate to brutally slaughter and eat captives but they're also willing to listen to reason once their opponents have proven their worth to them.
 * /tg/ loves to bring this trope to its ultimate form: "The Tarrasque is actually a pretty swell guy".
 * Kharn: What a fun guy.
 * The Tarrasque is actually a border-line example in the source material: the Tarrasque isn't evil as usually encountered (it is neither made of evil nor intelligent enough to hold any malice), but it is suggested in Spelljammer that in their natural habitat, they are docile lithovores (with the solitary aggressive consume-everythings of other worlds being a result of something in the atmospheres).

Western Animation

 * Avatar: The Last Airbender: Most Fire Nation civilians. It's the Fire Lords of the Sozin dynasty - and a few fanatically loyal and self-aggrandizing military commanders - who are the really evil ones.
 * Even the military firebenders with their skull-faced helmets, parties to genocide, are carefully shown to be basically just guys. Our heroes have killed a lot of them, though never face to face.
 * The orcoid things in WITCH - they are initially presented as just Mooks, but it later turns out they've been misled by Phobos' propaganda. A large number of them help the rebels in the Final Battle and later help with reconstruction.
 * Hack & Slash of ReBoot only followed Megabyte's orders because they knew Bob would always stop them. When Bob is gone Slash can't bring himself to kill a Bi-Nome on Megabyte's orders, and says that he misses Bob. Then the two switch sides.
 * Colossus in X-Men: Evolution was a member of Magneto's Acolytes. In his second appearance, it was revealed during a confrontation between him and Wolverine that he was a reluctant member of the group and Magneto had blackmailed him into joining. In subsequent appearances, Colossus was consistently portrayed as the most sympathetic member of the Acolytes and was the first to abandon the group after Magneto was seemingly killed by Apocalypse. He later helped the X-Men in their final battle against Apocalypse and was shown in the Distant Finale to become a full-fledged member of the X-Men following Apocalypse's defeat.
 * In one Tom and Jerry Kids short, the duo encounter an evil witch and her Frankenstein monster henchman. After chasing them outside, the monster tells Tom and Jerry he's really a good guy and has been trying to get out of the witch's castle for a long time. The episode ends with the three of them walking off.
 * The other toys in Sunnyside Daycare (such as Ken in Toy Story 3. The real reason why they were all evil in the first place is they were all afraid of
 * Zecora the zebra in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Initially, everyone in Ponyville is terrified of her and convinced that she's an evil enchantress (to the point where Pinkie writes a song about it). It later turns out that she's actually quite friendly and helpful, and the others apologise for leaving her out of pony society. By "Nightmare Night", she's trusted enough to play with the children and is referred to as "our friend Zecora" by the Mayor.