High Heel Face Turn/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Female Mooks are more likely to betray the Big Bad.

  • Straight: Alice, the female mook of Big Bad Bob, betrays him for Charlie, The Hero.
  • Exaggerated: Every female mook betrays the Big Bad for The Hero.
  • Justified: The villains are very misogynistic, and the female mooks want to be on a side where they're treated better.
  • Inverted: Alice, The Chick, betrays Bob, The Hero, for Big Bad Charlie.
    • Or, Bob, the male mook of the Big Bad Alice, betrays her for The Hero Charlotte.
  • Subverted: Alice, The Vamp, pretends to betray the Big Bad Bob, so she can seduce The Hero, Charlie.
  • Double Subverted...but she winds up falling for him for real, and when it comes time to betray Charlie, she can't.
  • Parodied: Alice is extremely shallow and falls for Charlie for superficial reasons, having only been with Bob until someone more Badass and better "equipped" came along.
    • Alice is Genre Savvy and in Bob's service because she wants to meet a heroic man.
  • Deconstructed: Alice secretly betrays Charlie by rescuing Bob from death, but she makes to clear that she's True Neutral and if she ever sees Bob, she'll kill him. Then she leaves and is never seen again.
    • The second Arc comes, showing that she used Bob to kill Charlie, so she gains his fallen empire, becoming the new Big Bad.
    • Big Bad denies all women applying for his organization because of this trope, so he ends up with a reputation of a sexist, his mooks make jokes thinking he's a homosexual, and complain about lack of women around. The Big Bad himself dies as a virgin.
  • Reconstructed: The new Arc comes along, the villainess Darlene has Bob right where she wants him, but Alice makes a Big Damn Heroes moment, claiming that she'll hang around him for a while for entertainment. She becomes the one to kill off Darlene.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice, the female mook of the Big Bad Bob, is a Heel Face Revolving Door.
  • Averted: All evil characters stay evil, and all good characters stay good, or male and female characters turn evil and good at equal rates.
  • Enforced: "We planned for the villains to die, but we don't want The Hero Charlie to have to kill a woman."
  • Lampshaded: "Figures Alice is helping us. Women Are Wiser, after all."
  • Invoked: The Hero, Bob Kirk, seduces the female mook Alice to get her to betray Big Bad Charlie.
  • Defied: Alice decides she isn't in to goodie-two-shoes types.
    • Charlie quotes "If I'm to be an evil overlord, all my mooks will be all male."
  • Discussed: "You know, if this were fiction, Alice would be helping us now."
  • Conversed: Why do the women on these shows always seem to turn good?

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