Dragon with an Agenda

A Dragon with an Agenda is a character serving as The Dragon to the Big Bad, but having different goals from him. For example, if this character encounters the heroes immediately after the death or defeat of his boss, he won't try to complete his master's Evil Plan, but will instead go on to pursue his own plans.

Most commonly, he and the Big Bad have a mutually profitable alliance, and the Big Bad just happens to be more powerful of the two. If he's also influencing the Big Bad's plans, then he's at the same time the man in front of the man and The Man Behind the Man. Dragon-in-Chief is when The Dragon is actually the more dangerous of the pair, by a significant margin. It is not unknown for him to have taken on service for his own purposes and fooled the Big Bad into thinking he's subordinate.

Rather than a straight evil character, he tends to be an Anti-Villain or an Enigmatic Minion. Contrast with Battle Butler and Psycho Supporter, who are often The Dragon but have the same goal as their master. Unlike The Starscream or the Reliable Traitor, they are usually at least nominally loyal, and their main agenda doesn't outright conflict with that of their boss. If The Dragon and the Big Bad are equal or nearly so, you have a Big Bad Duumvirate. If they outlive the original Big Bad, this type of Dragon may go on to pursue their own motivations and become a Dragon Ascendant. Compare/contrast with the similar trope Piggybacking on Hitler. The equivalent among the hero's allies is ...Who Needs Enemies?.

Anime and Manga
"Char: Blame this on the misfortune of your birth."
 * Archduke Gorgon from Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger. Theoretically he allied himself with Big Bad Dr. Hell to help him to destroy Mazinger-Z. But his real goal was He succeeded on all fronts.
 * Scary Black Man Colonel Black is this to Commander Red in Dragon Ball.
 * Dark Magical Girl Lutecia from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS who cooperates with Mad Scientist Scaglietti not for his goals of world domination but to find.
 * Pain in Naruto, and almost all of Akasuki in general. Also.
 * Kabuto, because.
 * Carrossea Doon from Madlax is only with Enfant to, rather than for Monday's insane plans.
 * to Amber in Darker than Black.
 * In the anime adaptation of Kirby, Meta Knight.
 * Nico Robin in One Piece starts out as a Dragon, but is later on revealed to have her own plans. After Crocodile's defeat, she joins Luffy's crew.
 * Saten in NEEDLESS, who is introduced as one of Simeon's Elite Four, yet in a few scenes he "accidentally" helped out the good guys as they infiltrated Simeon's HQ. It turns out that
 * That's in the anime anyways.
 * Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh! did this to his own Kaiba Corporation when he was what, twelve?
 * This trope is interestingly invoked in Neon Genesis Evangelion by Gendo Ikari, playing The Dragon to Keel Lorenz by ensuring the destruction of the Angels to open the path to Insturmentality. Of course, once the path is open, he will immediately take things off the rails for his own reunification scenario.
 * from Kurohime. Rather than follow the Big Bad Yashahime's plan and rule the universe, he just wants to exterminate humanity.
 * From Pokémon Special, . Turns out she was The Dragon from another villainous team; she was actually working undercover as The Mole to learn more about various Pokemon from space.
 * In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Char Aznable split his time between earnestly supporting Zeon's cause and trying to murder his boss's entire family in revenge for his father.


 * Ichiki from Nabari no Ou plays The Dragon to Hattori before she . It appears that she'd been planning to.
 * Subverted in Gundam Seed. It's clear from fairly early on that Patrick Zala's right-hand man, Rau Le Creuset has his own agenda, though just what it is isn't made clear. Than The Reveal comes along: he's.
 * In Saint Beast, Lucifer is initially this clearly having his own motives other than just serving Zeus, but eventually he rebels and tries to take everyone he can with him leading to a The Good, the Bad, and The Evil situation.
 * Gundam ZZ's Glemmy Toto starts out as a Villain of the Week, eventually graduating to a position as Haman Khan's right-hand man. While the two of them share the goal of recreating the glory of Zeon, Haman intends to do it herself. Glemmy, on the other hand, seeks to reinstate the Zabi dictatorship, as.

Comic Books

 * In the Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War story arc, every major baddie had a different agenda.
 * The Anti-Monitor's goal is simple - to wipe out every single thing in the matter multiverse. Nice when a villain has such a clear focus on what they want, isn't it?
 * Sinestro was aiming to bring order to the multiverse by taking it over and ruling as the head of the Sinestro Corps in much the same way as he did his home planet of Korugar...or so he lets everyone think.
 * Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman, is much cleaner, as all he has ever wanted was to die and be reunited with his dead wife. If the Anti-Monitor is Sinestro's Dragon, then Henshaw is the Anti-Monitor's as the Anti-Monitor promised him death.
 * Superboy-Prime, meanwhile, only ever wanted to He actually succeeded.
 * In Infinite Crisis, the main members of the Secret Society of Super-Villains:
 * Lex Luthor was apparently there to brainwash the heroes,.
 * Talia al Ghul was there so that when the villains took over the world, she could betray he allies, kill the surviving villains and create an ecologically sustainable utopia.
 * Black Adam signed up to get villain help protecting his country. Even Bad Men Love Their Fatherlands.
 * Calculator and Deathstroke were in it for the money, fellows.
 * Doctor Psycho was... Uh... Ummm...
 * Mystique practically defines this trope. Her betraying the boss in charge is almost expected at this point, such as when

Fanfic

 * Past Sins has an interesting twist on the concept; the Big Bad is an extremely Reluctant Monster forced into the role, where The Dragon expects an Omnicidal Maniac.
 * The Doctor Who/Jem crossover fancomic Outrage reveals that Eric Raymond's toady Techrat was actually one of these.
 * In With Strings Attached, the Raleka have a completely different agenda than, but they have to work together to take the Vasyn pieces from the four.
 * In Ponies Make War, Nihilus serves King Titan with the intention of betraying him the moment she secures the Elements of Harmony. Princess Celestia anticipated this from the start, and actually helped to encourage it.

Films -- Animated

 * Shenzi from The Lion King has an agenda. As the Matriarch of the hyena clan, who the Big Bad Scar used to keep the Pride Lands under control, she seemed to just want freedom, power and food for her clan.

Films -- Live Action

 * In Con Air, Cameron Poe asks black supremacist Diamond Dog why he's content to be second in command to white Big Bad Cyrus Grissom. Dog replies that while his long term agenda is vastly different from that of Cyrus, he needs to escape before he can get back to it - going along with Cyrus is "a means to an end".
 * In Die Hard, Hans' top henchman Karl's brother--another of Hans' henchmen--is killed by McClane. Karl wants revenge against McClane, losing interest in the main mission for the rest of the movie.
 * The Twilight: Eclipse movie seems to do this to Jane, implying that she will allow the Cullens' deaths without Aro's knowledge. This makes more sense than in the book, where Aro wants Edward and Alice to join his side but nevertheless is willing to let Victoria's army kill them.

Literature

 * Galadan Wolflord in The Fionavar Tapestry. Rakoth, the Big Bad, is a pretty standard dark god/ Evil Overlord who is out for world domination, but Galadan wants to destroy the world because he was driven mad by the death of his love, and he views Rakoth as a convenient weapon to help accomplish this. Obviously these goals are mutually exclusive, but it's implied that Rakoth knows all about Galadan's plans and does nothing simply because he knows the Wolflord isn't powerful enough to be a threat to him.
 * Per Word of God, Sauron only worked with Morgoth in The Silmarillion to advance his own ends- namely, to create perfect order by turning the world into a giant totalitarian state. As Morgoth's goals were, essentially, to take over the world so he could say "mine" before blowing it up, it's very likely that an Enemy Civil War would have broken out had the bad guys won. Fortunately for Sauron, Morgoth went down first, allowing him to graduate to Big Bad in The Lord of the Rings.
 * Grand Admiral Thrawn and Jedi Master Joruus C'baoth. C'baoth took Thrawn's orders with more and more reluctance as time went on, and he wanted very different things. Towards the end they weren't really on the same side anymore.
 * In the Codex Alera, Lady Invidia Aquitaine serves as her husband Lord Aquitaine's Dragon so that she can get her hans on the Realm's reins of power (and married him primarily for this purpose), while he . After breaking with him, Lady Aquitaine winds up in a similar relationship with , serving   only because.
 * In Tad Williams' Otherland, John Dread is this to Corrupt Corporate Executive Felix Jongleur. Jongleur's Evil Plan is focused on living forever, and he's trained the Ax Crazy Serial Killer Dread as a Psycho for Hire to go after his physical opponents. Dread is far, far more ambitions than Jongleur realizes, however, and is simply biding his time, waiting for a moment of weakness to take over. And he does indeed, deposing Jongleur as master of Otherland and embarking on a godlike orgy of virtual destruction.
 * On the good guy side we get Vimes playing this role to Vetinari, maybe. Most of the time Vimes appears to be just a good little dragon, but he does sometimes have a different agenda, or at least a different motivation. Depending on how you look at it; technically, they both want what's best for Ankh-Morpork, but they do often differ on what exactly that means.
 * In David Eddings' The Malloreon, the Demon Lords Mordja and Nahaz work for Zandramas and Urvon solely so that they can seize the Sardion from them in their moment of triumph and then drag them into hell. Urvon's other Dragon, Harakan/Mengha is also a Dragon with an Agenda; he conspires with Nahaz to drive Urvon mad and take his place, so that the two of them can rule with the world. Since Nahaz is out to betray both of them, and both of them believe that their magic is enough to keep him under control, he succeeds in being Dragon with an Agenda and Dragon-in-Chief to two separate characters.
 * In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "The Phoenix on the Sword", Ascalante. He was summoned to help the conspirators, and in his first appearance, comments on how his tools think he is their tool.
 * Drake from Gone (novel). A psychopathic Complete Monster, he serves as Big Bad Caine's top enforcer, but it's apparent from his interior monologues that he's just helping Caine in hopes that Caine and Sam will kill each other. Although he probably would've turned on Caine as soon as they no longer had mutual goals,

Live-Action TV

 * In the 2009 V-remake S1 finale, we find out that.
 * In Angel the incorporeal demon Sahjhan tried to use Holtz as his dragon by offering him vengeance against Darla and Angel. However Sahjhan's true goal was actually to either prevent the birth of Connor, Angel and Darla's unborn son, or kill him as a child. Sahjhan quickly grew frustrated with Holtz's focus on punishing the vampires instead of simply killing them as quickly as possible i.e. before Darla gave birth. And then Holtz decided that stealing Angel's son and raising him as his own would be a more fitting punishment, at which point Sahjhan totally lost control of his ally.
 * The Security Chief, who is Dragon to the War Chief's Big Bad in the Doctor Who serial The War Games.
 * In The Wire, it becomes apparent that Stringer Bell has very different goals from Avon, wanting to use the money from their drug operation to escape the ghetto and become a legitimate businessman. Avon meanwhile wants to protect his reputation and power as a gangster, and will even sacrifice smart business decisions to make war on the streets..
 * Alex becomes this for Oversight during season 2 of Nikita

Tabletop Games

 * The Ebon Dragon of Exalted serves as this to Malfeas. While he may advise Malfeas or defer to his authority, he constantly seeks to manipulate the Demon King to his own purposes, and endemically betrays him. One of the biggest exmples would have been back when they were the Dragon's Shadow and the Holy Tyrant respectively, and he manipulated him into creating the Unconquered Sun (a deity who could serve as something for the Shadow to oppose, even while he would also subvert the authority of the Tyrant).
 * In Warhammer, if you are a Dark Elf or a Skaven chances are you're this or have one or more of these under your comand. Wariors of Chaos and Orcs also might fit under this.
 * Similarly in Warhammer 40k, all Dark Eldar assumes this of their subordinates, as backstabbing is the only way to gain a promotion. Part of the reason why Incubi are valued as bodyguards over the Archon's own cabalites, Incubi loyalty is tied to their coffers, not your competency.

Video Games

 * The man in the trope picture, Ocelot.
 * In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, it is revealed that Darth Vader has been Palpatine's Dragon with an Agenda much earlier than the "I am Your Father" Scene in Episode V mentioned under Film. Vader tries pulling off a similar speech to the young Starkiller, but proves unable to sway him.
 * In the "Dark Side" DLC available for some versions of the game, Starkiller actually becomes a Dragon with an Agenda appealing to Luke Skywalker.
 * Astaroth in the Soul Series, according to the backstory.
 * In Suikoden III, you eventually learn
 * From the Paper Mario series, we have . In this case, The Dragon is even more evil; an outright Omnicidal Maniac instead of a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
 * The player was clued into the fact that  trying to work behind Count Bleck's back pretty early on. However, it isn't until the end of the game that we learn that he's really higher up on the Sorting Algorithm of Evil, instead of just being a Reverse Mole.
 * Before that we had the Thousand Year Door where power hungry Sir Grodus tried to unearth an ancient power.
 * Kefka from Final Fantasy VI kills the emperor at the end of the Disc One Final Dungeon and spends the next year killing whatever he pleases. He fits for this trope assuming he had an agenda in the first place.
 * All of Chaos' Warriors in Dissidia Final Fantasy have priorities other than serving him.
 * from the Chzo Mythos. The central conflict of the series, in fact, is him resisting
 * Dragon Age has Morrigan, who serves as The Dragon to Flemeth (though how evil Flemeth really is may be debatable), yet turns on her mother at the first sign of betrayal.
 * In Hordes of the Underdark, Mephistopheles spends the first two chapters manipulating events so that he can be freed of the Valsharess' control; culminating in the final battle of the second chapter in which he removes all obstacles between you and the Drow queen so that you can take his revenge for him.
 * The Ancient Minister and Ganondorf, as well as possibly Bowser, all take this role in Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Subspace Emissary
 * Hawke in the Advance Wars series. especially noticeable in Dual Strike as he actively chafes against Von Bolt taking control of Black Hole
 * Samir Duran could be considered a Dragon With An Agenda compared to the Big Bad Infested Kerrigan in Starcraft when we . He could also be viewed as an Enigmatic Minion
 * Colonel Autumn from Fallout 3 counts, as both he and the President have different aims for Project Purity. He wants to use it as leverage to  all the free humans in the Capitol Wastelands, and President Eden wants to use it to  everything in the Capitol Wastelands. It's also why he takes the opportunity to split as soon as the Lone Wanderer hits the Enclave base.
 * In Super Robot Wars Original Generation (as well as some non-OG games, to an extent), Shu Shirakawa acts as this to Bian Zoldark. Bian is well aware that Shu is both more powerful and more interested in pursuing his own goals, and he actually requests for Shu to merely observe during his final battle.
 * in Star Ocean 2
 * Kingdom Hearts: 358 Days Over 2 reveals that
 * also seems to have shades of this, looking back after Birth By Sleep, as he literally knows more about the backstory and mechanics of everything than the Big Bad, and is almost certainly manipulating his boss to an extent.
 * Vanitas displays hints of this in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, by nearly killing a key member of his master's Xanatos Gambit before they've done their job, and allowing another person to live as a "plan b" in his own words suggests he has plans of his own, but in a subversion winds up following his master's plan exactly anyway.
 * And the novels reveal that his true motive is.
 * Mastema in Strange Journey. He outright states he hates the Three Wise Men and is just doing the job for the chance to ascend to a superior form.
 * Recurring villain Wild Dog in the Time Crisis series.
 * It is revealed midway through Assassin's Creed Brotherhood that Cesare, Rodrigo Borgia's Dragon (and son) is one of these, with plans to conquer all of Europe.
 * Which Rodrigo tries to fight, as while the Templars want world domination, they don't want to be seen doing it. They'd much rather work behind the scenes.
 * In Might and Magic VII, Kastore initially serves as an advisor to King Archibald of Deyja (along with the three other Terrans that followed his lead, but Kastore is the dominant one). Once you've made your choice between Light and Dark, however, it becomes increasingly clear that Kastore is building a power-base of his own (apparently going for a more traditional military-focused necromantic regime, but it turns out it is a bit more complex than that), culminating in Archibald evacuating his closest followers to a laboratory off the coast of AvLee and Kastore assuming the throne of Deyja.
 * Commander Shepard arguably falls into this role in Mass Effect 2, being forced to work with the Illusive Man stop the Collectors from abducting colonists. Ironically, the Illusive Man seems surprised when Shepard (possibly) opts to destroy the Collector Base, tells him where to shove it, before taking the Normandy and loyal crew for themselves.
 * The Black Knight in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn aided The Chessmaster in  and fought on their side in the game's climax, but didn't seem to have much interest in which side won in the end. His only personal goal was to   This goal also existed when he was serving Ashnard in Path of Radiance, but the player didn't know about it then.
 * from The World Ends With You. It's hinted at but eventually

Web Comics

 * In Antihero for Hire, Angelson has at least one Xanatos Gambit going on under his boss's nose, we just don't know what.
 * Xykon and Redcloak have a mutually beneficial alliance in Order of the Stick. Redcloak only serves Xykon in order to open the Gates and get a fairer deal for the goblin race.
 * Although there's a fair bit more to it than that, as seen in Start of Darkness. Whether or not he'll turn Starscream eventually, or be forced to confront Xykon if their plans diverge, remains to be seen.
 * As it turns out,
 * Also from OotS, Sabine is Nale's Dragon. However, she's also covertly working for . Luckily for Nale, her agenda involves helping him advance his agenda.
 * And getting lots of hot hot sex from him.
 * Well, considering what she is, that last part goes without saying.
 * Gunnerkrigg Court: Ysengrin wants to Kill All Humans, and his boss Coyote apparently doesn't. It's possible that Ysengrin is trying to pull strings behind Coyote's back, and that Y killed Red and Blue because they saw too much.
 * Wanda from Erfworld seemingly serves Stanley the Tool willingly, but it turns out she convinced him to attack her kingdom of Faq because she expected him to get slaughtered, and when he emerged victorious, she only joined him in his quest for the legendary Arkentools because she was hoping she'd get to wield one herself..
 * When asked, her answer is somewhere between Because Destiny Says So and You Can't Fight Fate.
 * Torg from Sluggy Freelance seems to be doing this professionally now. First with the Minion Master, and now with Crushestro.
 * Ian and Anita in Errant Story fit this trope pretty well, with the added little twist that it isn't totally clear which one is the Big Bad and which one is The Dragon.

Web Original

 * In The Gamers Alliance, becomes the closest lieutenant of Duke Malphas after the siege of Vanna but has his own, secret agenda for working with the demonic duke.
 * In the That Guy With The Glasses world, The Other Guy is the real puppet-master behind the site. The one who everyone thinks is the ineffectual Bad Boss, The Nostalgia Critic, is just like that because he's desperate for attention and praise.
 * Linksano and Mecha-Kara are ultimately this during the Lord Vyce arc of Atop the Fourth Wall. In fact,

Western Animation

 * Destro in some iterations of G.I. Joe. He's pretty much in it for the money and The Baroness.
 * In Teen Titans, Slade (formerly a Big Bad himself) only serves as Trigon's Dragon so . Interestingly, he starts out this plotline very subservient to Trigon, and gradually starts acting less as a servant and more like a partner when he gets closer to getting what he wants..
 * Raythar from WITCH serves this role during the first part of the second season- Big Bad Nerissa has her own agenda, but Raythar just wants to avenge the previous Big Bad, Phobos. When a chance arises to put Phobos back on the throne, he ditches Nerissa and transfers his loyalty back to his original boss. Nerissa, meanwhile, replaces him with Shagon, who is her creation and therefore completely loyal.
 * The Fright Knight in Danny Phantom subtly expresses his absolutely distaste working for Pariah Dark and it hints he wants to go a different route. It ultimately proves true when he works against Pariah during the final battle. It's hinted he went to serve Vlad, but the original writer left the show before possible stories of this could have been told in Season Three.
 * On Gargoyles, the Weird Sisters serve this role for the Archmage--he wants revenge on Goliath, while they want revenge on the Magus and the rest of the Avalon Clan. They couldn't really get on the island themselves, however, since Oberon had forbidden it; the reason they willingly put themselves under the Archmage's service was because they knew he would order them to go there, exploiting a loophole in Avalon's laws.
 * They could arguably be considered this for Oberon later, though that depends on whether or not he counts as a villain. Word of God says they are still plotting revenge, despite Oberon being at peace with the Avalon gargoyles.
 * Sonic the Hedgehog  in the final minutes of the series finale was revealed to be this.
 * In the original My Little Pony, Porcina's Raptorian minions encourage her to go to the extreme of turning Ponyland and all the Little Ponies into glass because they want to take the place for themselves.
 * The X-Men: Evolution version of Mystique. In the first season, she's working for Magneto, but they have a slight falling out and works independently for the rest of the series. This causes some tension when both tried to take command of the Brotherhood, with varied results depending on the episode and the Brother.
 * In a dark future episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Grim is ultimately this to dark overlord Mandy.