The Mole/Playing With

Basic Trope: A bad guy who pretends to be a good guy.

Straight: Most people assume Bob is a good guy, until The Reveal when it turns out he was a villain (or working for them) all along.
Exaggerated: Everybody in the story is secretly working for someone else.
- Alternatively, Bob is working for more sides than he can keep track of at any given time.
- Or, Bob is the leader of the heroes.
Justified: Bob is a mole because he's being blackmailed or coerced.
- Bob has good reason to dislike the good guys.
Inverted: Bob is a Reverse Mole.
Subverted: Bob is revealed as a mole, but then it turns out to be someone else framing him. See Red Herring Mole.
Double Subverted: Bob is revealed as a mole, then it turns out to be someone else framing him, but at the end Bob really is the mole after all.
Parodied: Bob is so obviously a mole that it's ridiculous nobody else notices. For example, in a Funny Animal work, he is literally a burrowing mammal of the family Talpidae.
- Alternately, the mole has a large brown melanocytic nevus on his face or elsewhere on his body, a la Austin Powers.
Deconstructed: The psychological aspects of being a mole are discussed. We see the angst Bob suffers over having to betray the people he befriended.
Reconstructed: Bob is the focus character, or even the protagonist. His Backstory and psychological issues are studied; he has an opportunity to make a Heel Face Turn... but doesn't. In the end, he carries out his betrayal exactly as planned, surprising everybody.
Zig Zagged: Bob is set up as the mole, but turns out to be a Double Agent. The guy framing him is actually the mole, but working for a third side. Then the protagonist ends up being a mole too.
Averted: There are no moles -- everybody's on the side they claim to be.
Enforced: In any work set during the Cold War, it's well known that both sides employed moles, so there pretty much has to be one.
Lampshaded: "There's always a mole in these stories. And it's always the person you least suspect."
Invoked: "We've got to plant a mole in their team; it's right there in the Spies Handbook."
Defied: "There's no mole among us; the psychometer would ferret one out in an instant."
Discussed: The characters talk about how likely it is that there will be a mole, given the political situation.
Conversed: "I knew he was a bad guy!"

Back to The Mole.