Evil All Along

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The hero is searching for a very special treasure. Too bad he doesn't know his way around. He meets a very nice person who offers to help the hero find the treasure. But wait, wasn't the temple supposed to be toward the south? Then why are you walking north? And why won't his guide answer his questions? And oh drat, there's the Big Bad. That "guide" was his minion, and thus evil all along.

Variation: If the guide turns out not to be just a minion, but the bad guy himself, he was the Big Bad all along. However, it may be that the Evil All Along was fake, and the person in question was Good All Along. It could also be that the person in question made a Heel Face Turn.

Compare and contrast Good All Along. Heel Face Turn might be an effect of this trope. See Hidden Evil for subtypes. Compare Big Bad Friend.

Since almost every example of this trope is a spoiler, expect OPEN SPOILERS!!!

Examples of Evil All Along include:

Anime & Manga

• Jack Vessalius of Pandora Hearts.
• Pokémon
  • This trope is used all the times in the anime, with Team Rocket always disguising themselves.
  • Other examples exist, like in the movie Pokémon: Jirachi Wishmaker, where Butler seems like a good guy, but is actually evil and tries to abuse Jirachi. He does make a Heel Face Turn, however.
  • And Domino from Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns, who seems like a good-natured ditzy teenage girl but actually a mean, hyper-efficient Team Rocket operative who is working directly under Giovanni.
• In Digimon Adventure 02, Ken was the evil Digimon emperor all along. This is made glaringly obvious from his first appearance onwards.
• Kabuto from Naruto actually did manage to pull off the "helpful, harmless stranger" routine pretty well. From his personality, to his appearance there's very little to tip you off to his being a threat. He was trained from childhood specifically for this, having worked as a spy on behalf of the Hidden Leaf Village from within all of the other major ninja villages.
• Blackbeard from One Piece encourages Luffy to continue to pursue his dreams after he is mocked by another pirate crew. This guy would go on to defeat Luffy's elder brother Ace, and hand him over to the World Government. Once his and Luffy's goals crossed over in Impel Down, he gloated about his in his face, provoking a small fight.
• The anime version of Blue Dragon has one of these in the form of Zola near the end of the series. Though it appears at first that it's just a simple Face Heel Turn, the characters try to fool themselves into thinking that. Evidence in the last episodes proves otherwise.
• In chapter 50 of Mirai Nikki, Akise claims that Yuno is the actual villain, who used Yukiteru, and plans to drive him to the brink of despair and kill him in order for her to become God. Of course, Akise is the one who said it, so who knows if it's actually true. As of chapter 53, it seems that Akise was right and wrong at the same time. Yuno wants to kill him, but only so they can be together forever via an endless cycle of Peggy Sues. Maybe.
• In the last minutes of the final episode of Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt we find out that Stocking is actually a demon.
• Walter from Hellsing (only in the manga).
• Bleach
  • Aizen.

"The Aizen you knew...never even existed."

• • And Ginjo.
• Rasati and Lillia's guardian in Elemental Gelade. He broadcasts it from a mile away, but Rasati doesn't seem to notice.
• Fuuma Kotarou from Nabari no Ou.

Films -- Animation

• In Disney's Aladdin, Jafar was the bad guy all along. This is fairly obvious to the audience; the characters themselves find out the hard way when Jafar tries to have Aladdin murdered, then steals the lamp and takes over.
• In Disney's Tarzan, in turns out Clayton was planning all along to capture and sell Tarzan's gorilla family.
• Obviously, Ursula was it in Disney's version of The Little Mermaid, but that one was very much expected.
• Scar in The Lion King was evil all along, he even killed his brother when he had the chance.
• In the movie Ice Age, Diego is Evil All Along. He makes a Heel Face Turn however, and becomes a member of the crew in the sequels.
• In the Kim Possible movie So The Drama, the boy for whom Kim falls turns out to be evil.
  • And a robot.
• In Atlantis the Lost Empire, Rourke and the other mercenaries (basically, everyone on the expedition but Milo) were Evil All Along. Fortunately a Downer Ending is averted when everyone but Rourke and Helga do a Heel Face Turn.
• Mr. Sykes, Ernie & Bernie from Shark Tale.
• The Mayor of Dirt from Rango.
• Toy Story
  • Stinky Pete from Toy Story 2.
  • And Lotso from Toy Story 3.
• Igor's Know-Nothing Know-It-All mentor Dr. Glickenstein from Igor.

Films -- Live-Action

• Indiana Jones
  • Used in Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which the guide at the beginning runs away with the treasure.
  • Neither Professor Jones Sr. or Jr. smelled the Honey Trap in The Last Crusade. Was anyone else surprised?
  • Also in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy's friend turns out to have lied about being good near the end of the movie, though it's kind of obvious even before he admits it. He's shown having left a trail of beacons for the Soviets to follow.
• In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Senator Palpatine turns out to be Darth Sidious, the head of the Sith. And he's been playing both the Republic and the Separatists, along with the Jedi, for complete schmucks. Of course this was not a surprise to anyone seeing as people knew he'll be the emperor.

Literature

• Harry Potter
  • Subverted: it appears that Snape was evil all along after he kills Dumbledore. But then it turns out that it was all part of Dumbledore's Gambit Roulette and Snape really was good.
  • A more straight example: Peter Pettigrew, a.k.a. Ron's pet rat Scabbers, who turns out to be the one who betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort and concealed himself as a rat for 12 years, leaving his friend Sirus Black to receive the blame.
  • There's also the matter of Mad-Eye Moody in Harry Potter. Even though it's not really Mad-Eye, but Ax Crazy Barty Crouch Jr. impersonating him, it's still an Evil All Along situation.
• Nicolae Carpathia in the Left Behind books, though nobody but the Tribulation Force and those who have once been in Nicolae's close circle of friends really know just how evil Nicolae is under the public persona he projected up to the midpoint of the Tribulation. After he is indwelt by Satan, Nicolae's façade slowly cracks and the public gets to see the true person underneath. Strangely, though, Jesus berated Nicolae in his "The Reason You Suck" Speech, saying to him that You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good, which became a point of contention for some readers.
• In Jack Vance's The Gray Prince, the titular Prince was a childhood friend to heroine Schaine; and for most of the book she firmly keeps in mind that, whatever his present political views, he once saved her brother's life. And then it turns out he in fact hated their family to the point of deliberately allowing her brother to be horribly injured and only claimed credit for the deed later.
• Played with, though not exactly subverted, in Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker, as Denth the mercenary, who has been leading princess Vivenna in her quest to overthrow the government of T'Telir (under the pretense of following her orders), betrays her, murders her best friend, and tries to steal her Breath. She is surprised, but since he had quite literally been warning her the entire time that he could not be trusted, she felt kinda stupid, too. Best line: "Do you know what I hate most about being a mercenary, Princess? Fulfilling the stereotypes. Everyone assumes they can't trust you. The thing is, they really can't."
• The Dresden Files: Martin in Changes turns out to be a Red Court infiltrator. Subverted in the end, as it turns out he performed a Heel Face Turn long ago and his apparent betrayal of the heroes was actually part of a Batman Gambit to wipe out the entire freaking Red Court with their own curse. Only Harry knows the truth.

Live-Action TV

• True Blood tends to do this a lot, especially with their Big Bad of the season. As it turned out, Rene Lenier was just hiding behind his nice exterior while being a bloodthirsty sexist murderer, and in a more extreme example, Maryann Forrester who turned out to be a freaking homicidal Maenad. Season three followed suit with the Faux Affably Evil King Russel Edgington who quickly turns into a genocidal maniac, and season four arguably averts it by giving it's Big Bad Marnie a bit of a Face Heel Turn. Or rather, it shows her Start of Darkness.
  • Played somewhat straight with Rev. Newlin (Jr.); although it was clear from the beginning on he was more than just another bigot, few viewers were expecting him to turn into a full-fledged villain who imprisons the protagonists and wants to burn another character to death. Given, no-one was expecting him to become a vampire!
  • What about the fairies?
• Boyd Langdon in Dollhouse. Turns out he was secretly the Big Bad all along and running a ridiculously complex Evil Plan with Echo and co. at the center. And he seemed like such a nice guy. Although he wasn't completely evil. He was more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist in the end.
• Cassidy in Veronica Mars: He starts by raping Veronica lying about it but he becomes truly evil in Season 2. He kills a bus full of his classmates, a witness could turn him in, and 3 people on a plane. This wasn't revealed until the finale but yes he was evil.

Radio

• Several times in Dickensian parody Bleak Expectations, the person helping Pip Bin with his latest scheme, such as the engineer who Pip employed to build a sewage system under London, is blatantly his evil nemesis Mr Gently Benevolent (in that case planning to dig out the capital, float it across the Channel with hot air balloons and sell it to the French).

Video Games

• In Dead or Alive: Dimensions Genra is revealed to be a manipulative and power-hungry man, willing to do anything to get revenge for playing second-fiddle to the main branch of the clan. and that his loyalty and honer is just a facade to hide it
• In the part in Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time where Princess Peach gets a purple mushroom on her face -- it's not Peach. It was Princess Shroob the whole time, trying to take over the future castle.
• Fire Emblem
  • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, this happens to Lyon. Of course, everyone knows he's being devoured by the demon king, but that doesn't stop the main characters from believing he's still good.
  • Lyon is an interesting case where he actually invokes this trope to get Ephraim motivated to kill him so that he could die before the Demon King brings about the end of the world. He claims that all of their time they spent together as children he was pumping the siblings for information for the invasion of their kingdom just to make Ephraim angry enough to actually kill him.
  • Also, Orson appears to be evil all along too, but unlike Lyon, you can actually play him as a character. Later he appears as a boss.
• In Another Code for the DS, Ashley's father's old coworker was evil all along, having killed Ashley's mother and stuff.
• Eternal Darkness: At the start of Lindsey's chapter, a friendly patron by the name of Paul Augustine leads him to the Cambodian temple where Mantorok is entombed. Then it turns out that Augustine was actually Pious using an illusion spell.
• In the Nintendo DS version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, you get a new Raposa to join the gang, named Sock. You find him in a town where he doesn't live, and he goes with you to find his real home. Well, you're supposed to believe that. Near the end of the game Sock asks for a valuable item, gets it from Jowee, and throws it away. He then appears to be Wilfre all along. It also goes for Mari a bit, although she just thought she would help everyone by it (she worked with Wilfre).
• In Pokémon Colosseum, the mayor of Phenac city is actually the head of Cipher. In Pokémon XD, the same goes for Mr. Verich.
• In Pokémon Ranger an old man you help, named Gordon, is actually the head if the Go-Rock squad. In Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia, a teacher in the ranger school, Mr. Kincaid, actually works for an evil organisation Team Dim Sun. Also The organisation Altru and their leader Blake Hall are evil, while you don't know that till the end of the game.
• In the first two Professor Layton games, the antagonist Don Paolo disguises himself as other people. He's disguised as Inspector Chelmey in The Curious Village and as Flora in Pandora's box.
• The mysterious wizard who occasionally helps you out in Final Fantasy Adventure is eventually revealed as Julius, who's been using you the entire time to get his hands on the girl and her Mana Pendant. Retconned out in the Sword of Mana remake.
• In her Blaz Blue: Calamity Trigger story mode, Noel is accompanied by a mild-mannered pacifist intelligence officer named "Hazama." If you've seen trailers for Continuum Shift, you'll recognize him as Terumi, the Complete Monster behind the events of Calamity Trigger. What did he want from Noel? To Mind Rape her to take Nu-13's place as a living weapon of mass destruction.
• Played with in Knights of the Old Republic, when it turns out that YOU, THE PLAYER are Darth Revan, former Big Bad of the setting, bud didn't know it thanks to Laser-Guided Amnesia from the Jedi Council, leading to an Inverse of Criminal Amnesiac if you decide to return to The Dark Side.
• Maria in Silent Hill 2. To add insult to injury, you spend a lot of her "good guy" time trying to keep her alive.
• In Paladin's Quest, the student who goes with you to the forbidden tower on the academy grounds and goads you into accidentally freeing Dal Gren at the very beginning of the game is revealed at the end of it to be the Big Bad Evil Overlord Zaygos in disguise.
• Kingdom Hearts: Ansem, the researcher who was studying The Heartless whose reports the player has been running all across the worlds to find. Turns out, he's the Big Bad and The Man Behind the Man. And both directly and indirectly responsible for everything that's been going wrong in the worlds for the past ten years or so! In a subversion, it turns out that the guy we were calling "Ansem" was actually the Heartless of the guy who stole Ansem's name. The real Ansem is more of an Anti-Hero.
• In Bomberman 64, Sirius presents himself as Bomberman's ally and even aids him in reaching Altair's fortress and battling its guardians only so that he could steal the Omni Cube from Altair and use its power to conquer the universe. When his plan succeeds, he thanks Bomberman by putting "Destroy Planet Bomber" first on his list of things to do.
• We also have Marx from Kirby Super Star & Ultra.
• The Soda Poppers from Sam and Max Freelance Police want revenge in season 2 of the game series.
• In OFF, The Batter intended to destroy the world all along.
• LeChuck in Tales of Monkey Island. From the moment that Guybrush Threepwood inadvertently turns him into a human who acts like a Harmless Villain and helps out on Guybrush and Elaine from Chapter 2 up to Chapter 4 (all the while wearing his charming belt buckle), then kills Guybrush in a clever ambush as soon as our hero cures everyone of the Pox of LeChuck; Elaine sees that "with or without all that voodoo, [LeChuck is] still nothing but an evil sack of scumm".
• In the alternate timeline of Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, it's revealed that Stacey was the Big Bad all along. As soon as the reveal occurs her personality jumps straight from Girl Next Door to cruel and sadistic Baroness.
• Baten Kaitos
  • Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean does a very unusual form of this. You know Kalas, the main character? He's actually been working for The Man Behind the Man this whole time.
  • Origins does a more standard version: Quaestor Verus is far worse than Lord Baelheit could ever be...
• The Assassin's Creed II "Lost Archives" DLC reveals that Lucy had switched to the Templar's side before the first game's beginning. She even allowed Subject 16 to die from the bleeding effect when he discovered her betrayal. Everything she did throughout the games was a ploy she and Vidic devised to use Desmond to obtain the Apple of Eden. It would have worked too, if Juno hadn't programmed the Apple to force Desmond to kill Lucy. She's a particularly unusual example in that she gets killed before getting a chance to reveal her evil side.
• In Bioshock, this is part of the main plot twist that occurs about 2/3rds of the way through the game. ( Turns out Atlas, your main ally and Mission Control, was criminal mastermind Frank Fontaine all along.)
• Happens practically Once Per Episode in the Dead Space series. Kendra in Dead Space, Diana and Marker-Nicole in Dead Space 2, Tyler in Dead Space Mobile, and Colonel Bartlett in Dead Space 2: Severed are all revealed to be secretly evil bastards after spending a large amount of time as your primary ally/Mission Control.
• Ys SEVEN plays around with a lot of JRPG tropes. One of the major plot twists is that the Big Bad of the game is actually, of all people, Tia, the flower girl who you meet early on and who seemingly takes the role of potential main love interest. Unlike, say Luna or Lufia, Tia was secretly evil from the start instead of being forced into a Face Heel Turn midway through the game.
• In Dead Island, Colonel Ryder White, the Mission Control that leads you through most of the game, turns out to be secretly evil (although this actually doesn't come as much of a surprise to most of the characters, due to their strong anti-authority attitude). He betrays your group near the end, steals the experimental cure for the zombie virus, and ends up being the final boss of the game. This is complicated even further in the single-player DLC where you actually play as Ryder White, and it's revealed he was never the Mission Control at all, and it was really Kevin (another supposed ally) who was impersonating Ryder the whole time over the radio, and who manipulated Ryder and the original 4 heroes into fighting each other.

Web Original

• In The Gamers Alliance, several seemingly heroic characters such as Cain, Desdemona, Mordecai and Vaetris end up having been evil all along during the Godslayer era.

Western Animation

• In Totally Spies, Terrance and Dean first seem like Dean was evil all along. Then Dean turned out to be good all along. The same goes for the episode in which Tim Scam was introduced. It also applies for a lot of "villains of the day".
• In one episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, Plankton pretends he's going to help SpongeBob to become more assertive. He actually wanted everyone away from the beach, which all the viewers already knew.
• In season two of Winx Club, the new teacher appears to be an evil impostor in the end.
• Alpha Teens On Machines has an interesting example of this trope. In the first season, industrialist Mr. Lee seems to be the team's mentor. In the second season, The Reveal is that he's been a Corrupt Corporate Executive and a Mad Scientist all along. He uses DNA samples from the Alpha Teens to create the Mu-Team, an evil, superpowered group of Psycho Rangers.)
• Joe Tabootie from Chalk Zone in season 2,3 & 4
• The Angry Cop from The Goode Family episode "Gerold's Way or The Highway".
• Gobsmack in Pearlie.
• Vlad, the Russian teacher from Shuriken School was the main antagonist in the episode "Class Photo".
• Peppermint Larry from The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack'.
• Cheif and Lok from Tak and the Power of Juju.
• In his first appearance on Kim Possible, Kim doesn't realize that Monkey Fist is a villain.
• In season 2 of Wakfu, Qilby appears to be a friendly mentor to Yugo. He's actually an insane Omnicidal Maniac scheming to claim the Eliacube so he can go back to draining entire worlds of their wakfu.