Mirror Morality Machine: Difference between revisions
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Usually, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" is standard... but what if you could make ''them'' join ''you?'' This is what a lot of [[Saturday Morning Cartoon]] villains have thought, anyway, and built a spell, artifact or machine that can invert the target's morality like a mirror. The hero subject to the '''Mirror Morality Machine''' will suffer a [[Face Heel Turn]] and go over to the bad guy's side. The [[Character Alignment]] of the hero will go from Good to Evil and Lawful to Chaotic. Alternately, it may simply "suppress" his conscience and give his ego free rein to do whatever mischief he wants. Usually this results in [[Poke the Poodle|cheeky but harmless]] [[Madden Into Misanthropy|misanthropic antics]], despite the villain's darker intentions.
Usually the effects of the machine will have a time limit, after which its effects will wear off and the hero has to [[Clear My Name|clear his name]] for all the things he's done. However, his [[Sidekick]] will usually stop him before he does anything ''really'' bad and reverse the effects... or the bad guy will do it voluntarily because [[Pity the Kidnapper|the hero is a better villain than he is]]! This applies when the machine is not an [[Instant Allegiance Artifact]], and the hero-turned-villain turns on his "boss".
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* The ''[[Fantastic Four]]'' villain, the Wizard, has a gizmo like this (he doesn't use it that often). He once used it to turn the Thing bad, but of course it didn't last. Decades later, he used it to turn the [[Heel Face Turn|reformed]] Sandman [[Status Quo Is God|back into a bad guy.]]
** One reason he doesn't use it more often (although it'd been around for a while by that point) is that he tried it on the Thing again shortly after Johnny Storm's wedding. However, by that time the Thing had gotten [[Darker and Edgier]]
* In one satirical comic, a villain turned this on a superhero team, intending to make them her allies. What she hadn't allowed for was that they were actually a bunch of mercenaries with good publicity, so the device turned them into genuine heroes. [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain|Oops]].
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