Faith Heel Turn: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Obviously, in [[Real Life]], it takes a hell of a lot more than a loss of faith to just drive people to do evil. Done poorly, this can be an outright [[Strawman Political]] character to show that religion is supposed to be the sole moral compass for people.

When a character who gets religion turns ''good'' as a result, that's a [[Heel Faith Turn]]. If a character who gets religion turns ''evil'', it's probably a [[Cult]], [[Corrupt Church]], [[Path of Inspiration]] or outright [[Religion of Evil]].

 

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* The [[Psycho for Hire]] Akabane of ''[[GetBackers]]'' (AKA [[Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate|"Doctor]] Jackal") used to be an actual doctor who saved people, but failed to save the son of a good friend. That is the origin of his current personality.

* ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'''s Yukyuzan Anji is a particularly heartbreaking example, though he's not an awful person by any means. He turns from an extremely kind, devout, and physically unimposing [[Good Shepherd|Buddhist priest]] to the hulking [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|fallen priest]] that he is in the Kyoto arc when the children under his care are trapped inside his temple and burned alive, due to his landlord being a dirty [[Jerkass]].

** Actually, it's worse: that wasn't 'his landlord'; it was the village head, hoping to curry favor with the new government and its emperor-centered Shinto. [[Kick the Dog|So he had the village burn down a Buddhist temple full of orphans.]] Based on actual history, after the Meiji cut off government sponsorship of temples to promote their new standardized form of the 'native religion.' The orphans are kinda a stretch, though.

 

* This is the premise of the motivation for the Joker [[Captain Ersatz]], Mr. Rictus, in ''[[Wanted (Comic Book)|Wanted]]'', a kindly and religious man who was horribly scarred in a fire and, while on the operating table, died but found no afterlife.

* The minor [[Marvel Universe]] villain Madcap went there first, save that he also got total immortality and superpowers in the same accident that killed his entire family and church group, making for even greater nihilistic nutsiness (though not nearly as much evil).

** Being Will Eisner, though, he makes it both convincing and tragic.

* At least one [[Chick Tracts]] does this, possibly a few more. Act surprised.

** A lot of [http://fstdt.com/ FSTDT] quotes feature people who fear having a crisis of faith because they believe this will happen.

* The book ''Supervillains and Philosophy'' has an essay speculating about Two-Face's philosophical journey. (Obviously, this is a completely non-canon [[Alternative Character Interpretation]].) According to this essay, [[Batman|Harvey Dent]] aka Two-Face was a believer in the strongly ordered universe of Calvinism when he was a young man. But when he went to college and learned about atheistic philosophies like Existentialism, he began to believe that his two-faced random destruction was more appropriate to the [[Nietzsche Wannabe|true nature of this chaotic world]].

 

== Films ==

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[The Sparrow]]'': Emilio Sandoz seems to have at the beginning of ''[[The Sparrow]]''. Much of the book is finding out what exactly happened.

* An inversion, but not a heelFaithTurn, occurs in ''[[Elantris]]'' with {{spoiler|Hrathen}}, whose growing doubts over his religious faith cause him to turn ''against'' the [[Big Bad]]. From the villain's perspective, this would be a straight example.

* A [[G. K. Chesterton]] mystery story involves the puzzle of why one person would murder another on the grounds of ideological ''agreement''. In the story, a [[Hollywood Atheist]] has been trying to convince a [[Wide-Eyed Idealist]] that [[Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions|all morality is merely subjective]]. {{spoiler|He succeeds, so the idealist loses his faith and [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|concludes it's not immoral to murder the atheist]], whom he hated. Ergo, their ideological agreement led to murder.}}

 

== Live Action TV ==

* Averted (or perhaps inverted) with Father Dougal of ''[[Father Ted]]''. While Dougal often makes comments which would perfectly fit this kind of character (e.g. something like "Todd, we're not really supposed to believe in that Jesus stuff, are we?"), he is [[The Ditz]] and presented as a [[Dumb Is Good|better person]] than the more faithful Ted.

* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' has a bit more gradual version: Kai Winn was always jealous of Sisko for being the one the Prophets chose as their Emissary, and the fact that they didn't communicate with her wore on her more and more. Then the Prophets' rivals, the Pah Wraiths, ''do'' show her some attention, and by this point, that's enough to drive her over the edge into true villainy as their servant, working alongside Gul Dukat.

*** Unless you count Orb Experiences, (which outside the wormhole seemed more vision and less communication), I'm not sure how active the prophets actually were.

*** [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|...which happened in large part because they did that...]]

* An example where the person doesn't turn evil, but still gives up on life, occurs in the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' episode "Mortal Coil", where Neelix dies and is brought back to life. He has no memory of experiencing the Talaxian idea of the afterlife (where you go to a forest in which you're reunited with dead loved ones). Because he lost his whole family in a war, that belief was the only thing keeping him going, and it takes Chakotay to talk him out of suicide.

* An early episode of ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' had a religious guy go crazy and take over another planet with intense UV radiation as its [[A God Am I|god]]. What's particularly ridiculous about this is that no less than two of his teammates joined him. The one that didn't showed up in later episodes a few times, while the rest all died. Someone really fucked up the selection process for that team.

* Used along with [[Heel Faith Turn]] in ''[[My Name Is Earl]]''. A [[Scary Black Man]] gangster who went by "Hash Brown" and eventually became a priest ends up being on Earl's list at least five times, with each new list item revealed making him angrier and angrier until he snaps and decides to return to his gangster life. Then Earl recognizes his car and reveals that he broke the taillight on it (another list item). The broken taillight caused Hash Brown to get pulled over and be late for a deal which ended up turning into a brutal shootout, meaning that Earl had indirectly saved his life. Since this event was what had caused him to take up religion in the first place (he originally attributed it to divine intervention), he thanks Earl and goes back to being a priest.

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp", {{spoiler|the Reverend's homicidal madness came along with a [[Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions|prideful scorn]] for the faith he'd followed all his life}}.

 

== Mythology ==

** Judaism is kinda ambiguous on whether there IS such a thing as an afterlife, so it's not even clear that he got to see his original family after his death.

** Job never sees his dead children. A sequence of messengers bring him bad news, but they could be misinformed or lying. If Job's original family is really alive, his later children aren't a replacement; they're an expansion.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* ''[[Exalted]]'' has an unusually sympathetic example in the form of the Blood Queen, who used to be one of the Brides of Ahlat, an [[Amazon Brigade]] symbolically and literally [[Married to A God]]. The Brides of Ahlat are not permitted to sleep with any other man, on pain of death; a little-known fact is that this extends to rape. When the woman who would become the Blood Queen found this out the hard way, she renounced Ahlat, fled Harborhead, and became an akuma in order to take revenge on the entire institution that had ruined her life.

 

== Theatre ==

* This is a big part of the [[Historical Villain Upgrade|presentation]] of Salieri in the play ''[[Amadeus]]''. Salieri starts out, as he tells the audience, a pious man living a staid life. His beliefs are called into question when he meets Mozart and doesn't understand why a borderline [[Jerkass]] like Mozart gets divine musical talent but he doesn't. Thus, Salieri renounces God, and actually experiences improvement in his status from that point onward.

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Grandia II]]'' has {{spoiler|Pope Zera}}, who discovers that {{spoiler|God is (literally) dead}} and sets a plan into motion to resurrect the world's equivalent of Satan so he can destroy the world.

* In the ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' series, this is pretty much how the Templars fall after learning that {{spoiler|all miracles and works of God were actually the result of powerful ancient technology}}.

* [[The Chessmaster|Krelian]] and [[Body Surf|Grahf]] in ''[[Xenogears]]''. Oh so very much. While [[Rage Against the Heavens|Raging Against The Heavens]], Krelian claims that, if there is no God, he will ''make'' God with his own hands.

* Related to the Dracula example above, ''[[Castlevania]]'''s Dracula also renounces God after his wife died while he was busy fighting the crusades.

 

== Web Comics ==

* Gamzee Makara from ''[[Homestuck]]'', who, upon losing his faith in the Mirthful Messiahs, decides that he needs to {{spoiler|kill everyone and paint with their blood, and actually does so to Equius and Nepeta.}}

 

== Western Animation ==

* In the two-part ''[[Drawn Together]]'' episode "Lost in Parking Space", the devoutly religious Princess Clara is led to believe that the Rapture has come and taken her friends but left her behind on Earth. After she signs her soul away to a man she believes is Satan, she decides that she enjoys being evil and promptly goes on a rampage. When she discovers that the Rapture didn't actually come (her friends just ditched her to go to the mall), she changes back.

** Bob the Cucumber in "Clum Babies" goes on a murderous rampage and kills the entire cast when he is told that the Bible is open to interpretation.

** Lampshaded in "Lemon of Troy" when Bart is handing out roles to the members of his team. He designates Todd Flanders "the quiet religious guy who ends up going crazy".

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Religion Tropes]]

[[Category:Morality Tropes]]

[[Category:Just for Pun]]

[[Category:Esoteric Trope Names]]