Mole in Charge: Difference between revisions
Copyedit
(update links) |
(Copyedit) |
||
(3 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
Simply put, this is when [[The Mole]] somehow ascends to the position of actually running the organization he, she, or it has infiltrated. In effect, they try to cause the organization or group to self-destruct, or they go completely drunk on the power this new position gives them and corrupts it to their own purposes. A popular variant these days is to let the heroes wind up in charge of the [[Nebulous Evil Organization]] they've been fighting, where they try to steer legions of [[Psycho for Hire]] types to good ends... usually with mixed results.
Unlike [[Les Collaborateurs]], the ''''Mole In Charge''' keeps those loyalties secret.
This sometimes overlaps with [[Good Running Evil]]. A common cause of [[Divided We Fall]], since other subordinates don't realize it, and the requirement for the [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]] to save the day. Sometimes overlaps with [[Hired to Hunt Himself]]. May lead to the Mole in question [[Running Both Sides]].
{{Unmarked Spoilers}}
{{examples}}
▲== [[Anime]] & [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Code Geass]]'', Lelouch, prince of Britannia, is also Zero, leader of its enemies. However, he isn't [[The Mole]] since he honestly opposes Britannia. However, this ''does'' occur when {{spoiler|Lelouch succeeds Charles as emperor of Britannia. Too bad [[La Résistance|The Black Knights]] thought he was evil.}}
** In
* After the [[Time Skip]] in ''[[Death Note]]'', Light is in charge of the task force investigating his mass murder spree.
==
* This seems to happen to [[SHIELD]] depressingly often in ''[[Nick Fury]]'' stories.
* The premise of the [[Marvel Comics]] storyline [[Dark Reign (comics)|Dark Reign]] and especially the ''Dark Avengers'' series.
* One ''[[The Avengers (Comic Book)|Avengers]]'' story had the [[Red Skull]] become the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
** This caused more than a bit of [[Fan Dumb]], as it was during the Bush presidency and the name the Red Skull was using at the time had the initials D.R. OK, admittedly that's a funny coincidence, but "Dell Rusk" ''is'' an anagram of "Red Skull", so what else should the writers have called him? Furthermore, if "Dell Rusk" ''were'' a reference to a real life Cabinet member, it would probably be to ''Dean'' Rusk, who was Kennedy and Johnson's Secretary of State.
* ''[[Runaways]]'': {{spoiler|Alex Wilder}} becomes the undisputed team leader, only for it to be revealed that {{spoiler|he was working with the Pride the entire time.}}
* [[
* This is the entire premise of ''[[Agents of Atlas]]''.
* In ''[[Superman]]
* In ''[[Superman
* For a long time, this was a running sub-plot of the Kree/Skrull war in the ''[[Silver Surfer]]'' comics; a Skrull (locked in the form of a Kree woman) had somehow risen to the very top of the hierarchy of the Kree Empire.
==
* ''[[G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra]]'' ends with
* In the ''[[Star Wars]]'' prequel trilogy, Senator Palpatine becomes Chancellor of the Republic and [[Big Bad|Darth Sidious]] is the mastermind behind [[The Phantom Menace|the invasion of Naboo]] and [[Attack of the Clones|the Separatist Crisis]], which turns into [[Clone Wars|the]] [[The Clone Wars|Clone]] [[Revenge of the Sith|Wars]]. {{spoiler|They're the same person, whose ultimate goal is the downfall of the Republic and destruction of the Jedi Order.}} {{spoiler|And the Emperor, leader of the evil Imperial forces.}}
*
* ''[[The Man in the Iron Mask (1998 film)|The Man in the Iron Mask]]'': The Jesuits are actively opposing the king, so he decides to put a man in charge of finding their general and killing him. Of course, he chooses one of his close allies:
* ''[[The Departed]]'': {{spoiler|Frank Costello}} is an {{spoiler|FBI informant}}.
** Though that was ''after''
* In ''[[Smokin' Aces]]'', it's revealed that the leader of the mob is really
* In ''[[Salt]]'', the ending strongly suggests that
* In ''[[My Favorite Martian (film)|My Favorite Martian]]'', the {{spoiler|man in charge of the organization hunting aliens}} is himself an alien.
Line 43 ⟶ 41:
* In ''[[The Illuminatus Trilogy]]'', Hagbard Celine, leader of the Legion of Dynamic Discord, is also a Primus Illuminatus, as well as the leader of A.'.A.'.. Given his stated beliefs, the conflict of interest makes perfect sense.
** Of course, he took the place in [[The Illuminati]] purely to screw them up after he realized that he couldn't guide them to a more constructive path. His true loyalties, if such thing exists, lie with the A.'.A.'. He isn't their leader, though - if the group even has a leader, it's the Dealy Lama.
* In the [[Arsène Lupin]] novel ''813'', the Head of the French Police, the best detective ever seen, the only man everyone trusts to be able to catch [[Gentleman Thief]] Lupin...
* In ''[[The Man Who Was Thursday]]''
* In Robert Heinlein's novel ''[[The Moon is a Harsh Mistress]]'', Adam Selene, figurehead of the Rebellion against the Lunar Authority, is in actuality a virtual construct of the Authority's main computer, who has quietly attained both sentience and a sense of humor.
* [[David Weber]] is ''very'' fond of this trope.
** In the third book in ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]'', there is the taking over of [[Safehold]] by the staff of the colony ships.{{context}}
** ''Wind Riders Oath'' in the [[The War Gods|Bahzell]] series has ''several'' of them with much of the backstory and the conclusion of ''[[Prince Roger]]''.{{context}}
** The ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' books managed to avoid them for quite some time, but then came the Mesans, with an entire multi-generational network of moles.
* [[Older Than Radio]], it is. ''Konrad Wallenrod'' by Adam Mickiewicz is a classic of Polish Romanticism, in which he postulated using deceit (as opposed to direct action) against the occupiers. The plot involves a Lithuanian who rises in ranks of [[The Teutonic Knights]], and after many years leads their army to a total defeat.
* An odd variant occurs in [[Jack London]]'s ''The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.'' when Winter Hall, having paid the Bureau to kill its own leader, is placed in charge of handling the Bureau's correspondence and finances—the things the leader would normally do—while said leader is on the run from his team. The members of the Bureau ''know'' Hall is out to destroy them, because he ''told'' them
* The ''Wingman'' pulp series by Mack Maloney begins when the United States Vice President, a Soviet mole, arranges for the assassination of the President and lowers the Star Wars missile shield, allowing the remnants of the USSR to nuke the United States in revenge for destroying them in [[World War III]].
==
* This happens on ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' at least once every thirty seconds. {{spoiler|Between the "real" nature of SD-6, the loyalties of Derevko, the actions of Sark and the constant flip-flopping of characters between the CIA and other organizations... heck, there are even situations where a mole infiltrates an organization, rises to the top, then stages the infiltration of the organization they were moling for in the first place!}}
* Similarly, ''[[24]]'' has given us versions of [[President Evil]] who are really [[The Mole]] for hostile foreign powers.
Line 58 ⟶ 59:
* While most of the fifth season of ''[[Angel]]'' is a case of [[Good Running Evil]], towards the end Angel pretends to have been corrupted by the experience, becoming more of a Mole in Charge.
* Played for laughs on ''[[Get Smart]]'' when [[Flock of Wolves|all four members]] of a KAOS cell turn out to be moles from different agencies: the CIA, the FBI, Naval Intelligence and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|Scotland Yard]]. The only real KAOS agent had died years ago without being replaced.
*
** Except
* On ''[[Intelligence]]'', a seasons-spanning storyline involved the discovery of a CIA mole in the highest echelons of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and its fallout.
* On ''[[Criminal Minds]]'', the BAU team have been called in by the CIA to find a mole in their ranks
* In ''[[The Hour (TV series)|The Hour]]'' , the rumoured Soviet mole in the [[BBC]] ultimately turns out to be {{spoiler|Clarence}}.
* On ''[[Grimm]]''
* In ''[[Caprica]]'', Gara Singh is chief agent in the Caprica Global Defense Department and leader of the Soldiers of the One monotheistic terrorists on Caprica.
==
* After the formation of the [[
==
* In ''[[Sam and Max]]'', the mole in the toy mafia has become this.
* In ''[[BioShock
* You can do this in
* ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' has a major one. The head of
** Hell, the original {{spoiler|Yatagarasu}} was made up of the {{spoiler|prosecutor, detective, ''and'' the defense attorney}} on the case. Considering there's no jury in the [[Ace Attorney]] world and the Judge is an idiot, you can't get much more in charge than that.
* One of the key plot points of ''[[Dawn of War
* In ''[[Soldier of Fortune
* In the 2005 remake of ''[[NARC]]'', the chief of the N.A.R.C. anti-drug task force is also the leader of K.R.A.K., the main drug cartel. It turns out she founded N.A.R.C. specifically to eliminate all the other competing drug cartels.
* Happens in ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]''
*
* In ''[[Strife]]'', the leader of [[La Résistance|The Resistance]] is actually one of the 5 main leaders of [[Religion of Evil|The Order]]. His actions vary between giving his men suicide missions designed to get them killed, and genuine strikes against the Order which are really power grabs in an attempt to gain dominance over the other 4 leaders.
* In ''[[Call of Juarez]]: The Cartel'', the Mendoza Cartel's high-ranking mole inside the U.S. government turns out to be Department of Justice Deputy Assistant Director Shane Dickson, the head of the special task force assembled specifically to deal with the Mendoza Cartel. In fact, the task force was [[Springtime for Hitler|designed to fail from the beginning]], which explains why all 3 members work together so poorly and are so obviously corrupt and/or insane.
* The [[Resident Evil 1|first Resident Evil game]] has {{spoiler|Albert Wesker, in charge of the S.T.A.R.S. sent to the mansion}}
* In ''[[Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning]]'', the [[Big Bad]] of the {{spoiler|House of Sorrows Faction questline}} is the faction's leader {{spoiler|who is actually a Tuatha agent
==
* ''[[G.I. Joe|
* ''[[Transformers Animated]]''. The head of {{spoiler|Autobot Intelligence}} is {{spoiler|Shockwave, a shapeshifting Decepticon spy.}} Nice going, guys.
* In an episode of ''[[Captain Planet]]'' Gaia gets body-switched with one of the bad guys, leaving one of them to run her organisation and Gaia to "run" the bad guy organisation (by tricking them into acting in eco-friendly ways).
==
* Soviet Agent Kim Philby ended up as the head of British Intelligence's ''anti-Soviet'' branch, Section IX, for a brief time before he was suspected of being [[The Mole]] and moved to a different position. Part of it was that he was a superficially charming person, both to comrades and to women (whom he betrayed even more flippantly than he betrayed his country). However, another part which might have contributed is that he was often head of counterintelligence on a neutral station during [[World War II]], where an under-the-table meeting with the Soviets is easily explained in an [[Enemy Mine]] context ("Hey, this informant is endangering my men and yours, etc"). He wouldn't have even had to hide the fact that he was meeting the Russians from his own team, and security would not have suspected him of giving something away that he shouldn't because English Boys Don't Do That.
** There were constant suspicions that 'the Fifth Man', the undiscovered Cambridge Spy and Philby's colleague, was actually whoever was the current 'C' of MI-6, a literal example of this trope.
** A similar story exists during
* Admiral Canaris who was actually head of the [[Abwehr]] while also being part of the German Resistance.
** In ''The Unseen War in Europe'' by John Waller, Canaris once took a tour with insufficient security and Philby suggested an [[SOE]] team assassinate him. His boss vetoed the idea without saying why, except for some vague idea about his usefulness. Philby later claimed that an intermediary had opened contact, and possibly thought that would be more useful to the Western Allies than the Soviets (or just that it would blow him personally).
* At the height of the [[Red Scare]], it was believed by some of the wackier [[Conspiracy Theorist]]s that President [[Dwight Eisenhower]] was a [[Dirty Communist|Soviet]] plant.
* Alfred Redl was the most devastating spy [[The Sound of Martial Music|Austria-Hungary]] ever had, giving [[Tsarist Russia]] virtually every scrap of data he could get his hands on to the point where, by the time he was found out and forced to commit suicide, he had already retired, and over a year of preparation did not even
**
* [[Joseph Stalin]] has been accused of this, with some historians suggesting he may have worked as a spy for the Czarist secret police in the days before the Russian Revolution. If true, given that he would later become absolute dictator of the entire country under the movement he spied against and the virtually unchallenged head of the Communist world, it would probably make him the most successful example of a Mole in Charge ever. However, most historians have now dismissed this, as he was always referred to in Czarist police documents as a revolutionary terrorist, whereas their moles were always identified as moles.
* As part of a plea deal Enriqque Tarrio, chairman of the right-wing white supremacist "militia" "The Proud Boys", worked as an informant for the FBI.
{{reflist}}
|