History Main / DefectorFromDecadence

** ''FinalFantasyXIV'': Cid Garlond was the son of the greatest Magitek engineer in the Garlean Empire, and was set to surpass him. He eventually realized how bad the Empire was, and ran off to Eorzea to found the Ironworks and help protect the continent from his homeland's expansionism.

* ''Fanfic/AbraxasHrodvitnon'': [[OCStandIn Tejada]] is one of Alan Jonah's more affable eco-terrorist mercenaries, and [[OfftheGrid Mariko]] is a rogue Monarch scientist who agreed with Emma Russell about setting the Titans loose, got her colleagues killed by aiding Behemoth's escape, and has since had nowhere to go but to Jonah. As the fic goes on, Mariko is horrified and revolted at the mercenaries' inhumane and barbaric treatment of the captive [[TwoBeingsOneBody Vivienne-San hybrid]], and Tejada becomes disillusioned with her boss once [[VillainousFriendship her friends]]' bodies start dropping and Jonah continues keeping them in the dark. Ultimately, they both end up turning traitor to Jonah, and after being rescued by Monarch, neither has any problem helping Monarch to understand what's going on, to understand how to handle the new hybrid Titan without any collateral damage occurring, and to combat the monsters unleashed by Jonah's experiments.

* ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': The [[EcoTerrorist eco-terrorist]] [[spoiler:[[Characters/MonsterVerseEmmaRussell Emma Russell]] during the last half of the movie]]. She deserts her previous alliance in favor of siding with the heroes for two specific reasons. (1) She's horrified that Jonah and his mooks are going to happily sit back while letting King Ghidorah [[OmnicidalManiac exterminate humanity entirely and wreak even more destruction on the Earth's biosphere than we would've]], seeing as she just wanted a massive population cull and an ecological utopia for the survivors. And (2) Jonah and his men won't lift a finger to help her once it's ''her'' child [[MoralMyopia instead of everybody else's children]] who's in mortal peril of being killed by a Titan.

* Antain of ''Literature/TheGirlWhoDrankTheMoon'' is born into the elite families of the Protectorate who maintain their wealth by charging tariffs on the Road, the only safe passage in or out. After witnessing the trauma of separating an infant from her mother for sacrifice in the woods, he refuses to participate further and quits to become a carpenter.

* In ''VisualNovel/AceAttorneyInvestigations 2'', Edgeworth [[spoiler:quits as a prosecutor when he realizes that former Chief Prosecutor Blaise Debeste isn't interested in finding out the truth but just closing the case as quickly as possible, so he can continue investigating as an aide to a defence attorney instead of being threatened with redundancy.]]

* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'':

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}''

** In ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', there is a group that broke away from the Brotherhood of Steel because they believe that the leader is GoingNative. They call themselves the Brotherhood Outcasts. This came from the fact that the Brotherhood of Steel inside Fallout 3 is actually a sect of the entire Brotherhood of Steel - their original mission was about advanced technology and preserving it, though the leader of the group became more heroic in his intentions and went out helping others, against the rather haughty technological-obsessions of the rest of the group. The Brotherhood Outcasts stayed loyal to their original mission.
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'',

*** The Tremere themselves get this in droves come 5th Edition. The Clan had always been designed by a rigid, hierarchical power structure that was so transparently a pyramid scheme that most Clan members referred to themselves as "the Pyramid" internally; the fact that each member was [[GettingSmiliesPaintedOnYourSoul forced to drink the blood of the seven ruling Tremere]], on top of being more vulnerable to blood-bonding, drove that home. Then their prime Chantry got blown the fuck up by hunters, and ''something'' happened to the blood so that now, they can't blood-bind anyone. Although House Tremere still reigns supreme, the new breakway faction of House Carna adopts feminist and pagan imagery and is much more willing to flirt with the Anarch Movement. Whether it's an actual defection or girlbossing too close to the sun depends on how you want to play them.

*** The Tremere themselves get this in droves come 5th Edition. The Clan had always been designed by a rigid, hierarchical power structure that was so transparently a pyramid scheme that most Clan members referred to themselves as "the Pyramid" internally; the fact that each member was [[GettingSmilesPaintedOnYourSoul forced to drink the blood of the seven ruling Tremere]], on top of being more vulnerable to blood-bonding, drove that home. Then their prime Chantry got blown the fuck up by hunters, and ''something'' happened to the blood so that now, they can't blood-bind anyone. Although House Tremere still reigns supreme, the new breakway faction of House Carna adopts feminist and pagan imagery and is much more willing to flirt with the Anarch Movement. Whether it's an actual defection or girlbossing too close to the sun depends on how you want to play them.

*** The Tremere themselves get this in droves come 5th Edition. The Clan had always been designed by a rigid, hierarchical power structure that was so transparently a power scheme that most Clan members referred to themselves as "the Pyramid" internally; the fact that each member was forced to drink the blood of the seven ruling Tremere, on top of being more vulnerable to blood-bonding, drove that home. Then their prime Chantry got blown the fuck up by hunters, and ''something'' happened to the blood so that now, they can't blood-bind anyone. Although House Tremere still reigns supreme, the new breakway faction of House Carna adopts feminist and pagan imagery and is much more willing to flirt with the Anarch Movement. Whether it's an actual defection or girlbossing too close to the sun depends on how you want to play them.

* Lemongrab 2 from ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime''. By the time of the episode "Too Old", the original Lemongrab had become mad (well, mad''der'') with power, putting {{Shock Collar}}s on the Lemon Children and [[spoiler:almost eating his brother alive.]] When Lemongrab imprisons Finn and Bubblegum for wanting to take Lemonhope (the most normal of the Lemon Children) to Candy Kingdom for education, Lemongrab 2 starts rebelling, first by freeing them, then by [[spoiler:releasing the Lemon Children from their collars]]. Before [[spoiler:Lemongrab finishes eating him]], Lemongrab 2 asks Lemonhope to go with Bubblegum and become successful for the sake of the other Lemon Children.

*** Dinobot thought Megatron stranded him on an abandoned planet and defected in the first episode. In the second season, after realizing everything was going according to Megatron's plan, Dinobot returned to Megatron's side... Only to defect ''again'' once he realized what the full scope of Megatron's ambitions really was. alos because Dinobot didn't want to kill Rattrap.

** Luffy's childhood friend and [[BloodBrothers blood brother]] Sabo was this. Even though his parents were nobles, he was aware and grew disgusted at how selfish and arrogant they could get, not to mention the entire nobility of the island [[spoiler: crossing the MoralEventHorizon by trying to burn off a rubbish pile, which includes numerous villagers]]. He thus decides to run away by building a simple raft and start off his life as a pirate. [[spoiler: Too bad he got in the way of a World Noble and his raft was destroyed by the explosion. On the other hand, the timeskip revealed that he had actually survived and is now with Dragon's Revolutionaries, meaning that his desire to leave the nobility has come to fruition.]]

** The novel ''Literature/DeathStar'' reveals that the Imperial gunner (Tenn Graneet) who kept saying "standing by" had become a Rebel sympathizer after having [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone a mental breakdown over obliterating Alderaan]]; the laser was charged the whole time, and he was just trying to distract Tarkin long enough in the hopes that the Rebels somehow manage to stop the Death Star. In addition, the story revolves around a handful of individuals who eventually decide that the Empire isn't all it's cracked up to be and decide to leave and/or defect to the Rebellion. [[spoiler:Several of them had to stay behind on the Death Star to allow the others to escape, and Darth Vader would have killed the rest if he hadn't been forced to return to the Death Star to stop the Rebel forces from attacking the thermal exhaust port.]]

** ''[[Literature/StarWarsBladeSquadron Blade Squadron]]'':
*** Rebel pilot Braylen Stramm is a former Imperial officer who defected after growing tired of orders that revolved around oppressing local defenseless populations.
*** Besides Graneet, there were some TIE pilots who decided late into the novel to [[spoiler:defect to the Rebel Alliance. Some had to stay behind to ensure that they escaped. They would have been killed by Vader for it had he not been forced to return to the Death Star to stop the Rebel forces from attacking the thermal exhaust port.]]
** The novel ''Literature/DeathStar'' reveals that the Imperial gunner (Tenn Graneet) who kept saying "standing by" had become a Rebel sympathizer after having [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone a mental breakdown over obliterating Alderaan]]; the laser was charged the whole time, and he was just trying to distract Tarkin long enough in the hopes that the Rebels somehow manage to stop the Death Star.