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]].

 

 

{{noreallife|first, calling real-life people "evil" (let's be honest; that's what "heel" means in this context) [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|is an ''extremely'' bad idea]]; second, saying that people who don't believe in gods or a god are not good [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|is '''another''' ''extremely'' bad idea]].}} This is about how religion is portrayed in media.

*** Winn was an ass ''before'' the Pah Wraiths got involved; she got the job as Kai not because she was particularly devout, but because she had the political know-how to eliminate better candidates from the election. The Prophets probably ignored her because they realized she wasn't really in her position for the right reasons; to the Pah Wraiths, however, she (along with {{spoiler|Dukat}}) made an ideal [[Anti Christ]].

* 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.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Religion Tropes]]

[[Category:Morality Tropes]]

[[Category:Esoteric Trope Names]]

[[Category:Corruption Tropes]]