The Good, the Bad, and The Evil: Difference between revisions

Compare [[Morality Kitchen Sink]], in which characters from everywhere on the moral spectrum are present but they aren't conveniently sorted into white, gray, and black factions.

 

* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]] [[Gundam Seed|SEED]]'' had this with the Three Ships Alliance, which notably took the more morally upright members of the Earth Forces and ZAFT and put them into a faction that was (mostly) dedicated to Doing The Right Thing instead of racist genocide. Subverted in that certain members still stayed with either faction for better (Yzak) or worse (Natarle).

** Continued in [[Gundam Seed Destiny]], with the Three Ship Alliance which had most of the previous members in it, the supposedly [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned]] ZAFT forces under Durandal, and the Blue Cosmos/LOGOS forces who are pretty much evil.

* In ''[[Saint Beast]]'', the Saint Beasts are the good, Lucifer is the bad, and Zeus is the evil, although initally the latter two seem the other way around. The angels know things aren't right with the missions Zeus is sending them on but reject Lucifer's offer to join him because they know he's responsible for demons attacking humans. However, when they finally decide to rebel against Zeus they end up on the same side as Lucifer without actually agreeing to work together.

 

 

 

* The film ''[[Hard Rain]]'' does this with its three main characters. Tom (Christian Slater)'s security guard is the good, with Jim's (Morgan Freeman) armed robber apparently the bad, as his gang attempts to rob Tom's armoured car, and were responsible for killing Tom's uncle Charlie (Ed Asner). In a twist, the Evil is the corrupt Sheriff who likewise goes after the money from the truck, which Tom had hidden. When Jim is revealed to have been in cahoots with Charlie and had not wanted to kill anyone, he teams up with Tom, kills the Sheriff and Tom lets him escape.

 

* ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' does this with the second coup d'etat of Haven, firmly putting the Anti Villain group in control of the government, and a lot of the former SS and power hungry types out on the run as renegades. Notable for having it simply flip the status quo in a few areas: there're still bad Havenites, but now they're the exception rather than the rule

* After the Emperor's death, the Empire in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] started breaking up. Various captains and admirals left with their forces and became warlords, sometimes rejoining the Empire later, sometimes the New Republic, sometimes becoming isolationist, and most often fighting everyone. ''[[The Courtship of Princess Leia]]'' and three books of the [[X Wing Series]] deal with the New Republic's campaign against Warlord Zsinj. In ''Courtship'' he's a cardboard baddie, but in the [[X Wing Series]] he's really clever and nasty. Enough so that both the Empire and the New Republic form task forces to take him down, and surreptitiously they end up working together, both aware that this wouldn't last and if this cooperation was ever reported they'd face treason charges.

** Warlordism and the attrition that comes of a new leader rising to the fore, striking the New Republic, and getting beat down eventually whittled the Empire down small enough that Captain Pellaeon, who'd patiently served under each leader and picked up the pieces after, was forced to join a warlord. Eventually, during the [[Jedi Academy Trilogy]], Daala talked the various warlords into meeting together to try and get them to join forces; she and Pellaeon sat out their arguing, then put on gas masks and watched the warlords die. Then Daala [[General Failure|lost a good portion]] of this newly-replenished Empire and [[You Are in Command Now|left it to Pellaeon]]. A few years later, and Supreme Commander Pellaeon [[Hand of Thrawn|worked to make peace with the New Republic]], while other elements of the [[Vestigial Empire|Imperial Remnant]] fought furiously to prevent this. Decades after that, Grand Admiral Pellaeon was one of the heroes' most reliable allies {{spoiler|until he was assassinated by the Sith}}.

* In ''[[Mistborn]]'' you have several levels of this- Vin, Elend, and Sazed are [[The Hero|the good]], Kelsier and most of the skaa rebellion are [[Anti-Hero|pretty good]], the Lord Ruler and most of the human bad guys are [[Anti-Villain|the bad]], and {{spoiler|Ruin and the Inquisitors are the evil}}.

** Do note, though, that ''Vin'' is the one who states something along the lines of "Good? Bad? I'm just here to kill people."

 

* During season 4 of ''[[Lost]]'', Ben, [[Affably Evil]] and [[Magnificent Bastard]] that he is, talks his way into sort of teaming up with the good guys against [[Psycho for Hire]] Keamy and his men, although Ben [[The Chessmaster|still had his own agenda]] the whole time. Keamy becoming more expendable than Ben after he proves that he is a [[Complete Monster]] by {{spoiler|killing Ben's daughter}}, and is eventually killed by Ben himself.

* The season 2 finale of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' ends with Buffy teaming up with Spike to stop [[Complete Monster|Angelus]] from destroying the world. As Spike explained it, he ''likes'' the world; lots of fun things to do and [[To Serve Man|plenty of humans to eat]]. Although Spike decided "screw it" halfway through their team-up and left with Drusilla.

** The IRA are a long time ally and business partner of the Sons but lately Jimmy O'Fallon is trying to cut the Sons out of the lucrative gun running business. However, he has a lot of enemies among the other leaders of the IRA and they try to use the Sons as a weapon against Jimmy. So while Jimmy is the evil guy, it is a toss up whether the Sons or the IRA are the 'good guys' in this mess.

** Well, Hale could have been considered the "Good" {{spoiler|until they killed him}}. And really only Clay and Gemma can be considered Villain Protagonists, the others are more [[Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes|Type 5 Anti Heroes]] with Jax and Opie straddling the line between types V and IV.

* ''[[Juken Sentai Gekiranger]]'', sort of. GekiJyuKen school is the Good, RinJyuKen school is the Bad, where GenJyuKen is the Evil.

* Season 2 of ''[[Nikita (TV series)|Nikita]]'' is shaping up like this, with [[The Hero|Nikita]] and her allies as the Good, [[Government Conspiracy|Division]] and their [[Man Behind the Man]] [[Omniscient Council of Vagueness|Oversight]] as the Bad, and [[Private Military Contractors|Gogol]] and ''their'' [[Man Behind the Man]] [[Mega Corp|Zetrov]] as the Evil.

** Following the status quo changing events about midway through the season, the list is a bit different now—Team Nikita is still the Good {{spoiler|along with the [[Heel Face Turn]]ed last living members of Oversight}}, but Zetrov's head Semak is now closer to the Bad, and the Evil can be best represented by Amanda {{spoiler|and her partner Ari (Semak's [[The Starscream|Starscream]])}}, with Percy still somewhere between Bad and Evil.

 

* In the ''[[Halo]]'' series, an [[Enemy Civil War]] divides the Covenant between the Elites and the Brutes. The Elites join forces with the humans and eventually make peace with humanity when the war ends.

* ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' has Paragon Shepard, his/her crew, and Anderson as the only spots of good, the politicians and people like Aria in the grey area, and various mercenary groups, the Collectors, and the Reapers as evil.

* In the ''[[Dune II]]'', ''Dune 2000'' and ''Emperor: Battle For Dune'' games you have 3 playable factions (minus the subfactions, you can be allied to those) that fit this trope, the good House Atreides, the insidious House Ordos that is willing to do nasty things if necessary for it's endless pursuit of wealth and probably drugs its citizens to make them more submissive, vs. the evil House Harkonnen who are a royal house consisting almost entirely of perverted, deranged psychopaths who enslave, backstab, and a lot of other nasty things and their soldiers are more afraid of them than their enemy.

* ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'': Zero, Ciel, and [[La Résistance]] are the Good; [[Knight Templar|Copy-X]], [[Hero Antagonist|the Guardians]], and Neo Arcadia in general (or rather what Neo Arcadia has become) are the Bad; and [[Complete Monster|Dr. Weil]] and [[Ax Crazy|Omega]] are the Evil.

** Elpizo {{spoiler|can be considered to be all three. He starts out with the Resistance (that's the Good part), and although he certainly never rejoins Neo Arcadia, his hatred of it causes him to become an [[Anti-Villain]] (that's the Bad part) who stoops to using (and more importantly unleashing) the [[Sealed Evil in a Can]] that was created by the true villian Dr. Weil (that's the Evil part). Moreover, that power ''itself'' was originally a force of good, which was corrupted by Weil.}}

* Something like this happens in [[Fallout 3]] with the Enclave splitting up. An interesting variation as the player is actually given the option of siding with the ''more'' evil faction.

 

* ''[[Blip]]''. Heaven is run by [[Knights Templar]] willing to ruin the lives of humans for the sake of preserving order. Hell is run by a genuinely nice guy, who nevertheless wants to plunge the world into chaos by amplifying the titular blip in God's plan. The real good guys aren't allied with either side.

* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' has Torg and [[Nakama|his friends]] (the Good) sabotaging Hereti Corp, No Fun, and other ruthless organizations (the Evil) by working for the supervillain Minion Master (the Bad).

* Rather than splitting the evil, ''[[Sinfest]]'' splits the good. [[God and Satan Are Both Jerks]], but Buddha acts as a neutral figure in the conflict, ironically acting more "good" than the supposed good faction. (The protagonists themselves are all over the place—Slick in particular has declared allegiance to all three factions ''simultaneously''.)

 

* ''[[There Will Be Brawl]]'': Red, Peach and Luigi are Good; Link and the remaining mob bosses are Bad; and Kirby, {{spoiler|along with Ness and Lucas,}} is completely batshit ''evil incarnate''.

 

** This is actually true for most of the show. In the first season, Aang and co. are the good, Zuko is the bad, and Zhao is the evil; in the first part of the third, the good and bad roles are the same, but with [[Big Bad|Ozai]] joining Azula in the evil. After Zuko's [[Heel Face Turn]] the system breaks down, though at the very end you have the [[Fan Nickname|Gaang]] as the good, Azula as the [[Tragic Villain|crazy yet pitiable evil]], and Ozai as the [[Complete Monster|stone-cold irredeemable sadistic evil]].

* ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' turned into this pretty early on and kept building on it. It used to be that Team Phantom was the good and the [[Rogues Gallery|various ghosts he fought]] were the evil. Now, Team Phantom is good, Vlad and Valerie (along with a few more sympathetic ghosts) are the bad, and most of Danny's [[Rogues Gallery]] is the evil. By the end, however, Vlad is the evil and most of the [[Rogues Gallery]] is the bad.

* The [[Justice League]] temporarily side with the Legion of Doom against, Darkseid and his army from turning Earth into another [[Polluted Wasteland|Apokolips]].

** Luthor & company accidentally rescued Darkseid, and rather sensibly went straight to the League and explained there was going to be an alien invasion now and the planet needed saving, let us help. The League gave them a five-minute head start afterward.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Evil Tropes]]

[[Category:The Good, the Bad, and The Evil]]