History Main / RenegadeSplinterFaction

* The ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987'' are an inversion of the trope. They were founded by Hamato Yoshi, a martial artist who was expelled from the Foot Clan and fled to America, whereas his rival took over the clan [[TheCorrupter and drove them to evil]]. Casually[[note]]He's actually got that name from his practice of [[BrickBreak breaking wood planks]][[/note]], Hamato is now known as "Master Splinter".

** The Provisional IRA itself started as a renegade splinter from the the 2nd or anti-treaty IRA(which itself was a splinter group from the Original or Michal Collins IRA), the dispute was over tactics. The group that would become known as the Official IRA following the 1969 split wanted to unite Catholics and Protestant workers in a push to drive the British out and overthrow the Republic of Ireland and establish a communist state. The second group, the Provisionals favored more traditional green Republicanism and wanted to guard Catholic neighborhoods and carry out retaliatory attacks which the Officials believed would lead to sectarian violence and make it harder to unite both sides which was key to their strategy.

** Both sides had straw splinter (Protestant Action Force and Catholic Reaction Force, respectively) groups that were used to take claim for actions the main group didn't want to take credit for, especially sectarian reprisal attacks targetting civillians.

* In 1997 the Irish Republican Army (IRA) called a ceasefire in their armed insurgency against the UK government and held a meeting in which the majority of the IRA leadership decided to put down arms for good and instead find a political solution by backing the Northern Ireland peace process, which would eventually result in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Not all of the IRA leaders agreed with this though, and a couple of them wanted to continue the armed insurgency. These dissidents eventually formed a splinter group, calling themselves the "Real Irish Republican Army" (RIRA), and continued using IRA's old terror bombing methods throughout the late 1990s, and even a couple of further sporadic bombings during the 2000s. The most recent significant development the RIRA went through happened in 2012, where they merged with the Irish vigilante group, Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD), and formed the New Irish Republican Army (NIRA), ushering in a new wave of small-scale terror bombings and shootings which has so far lasted throughout the 2010s.

** The Provisional IRA itself started as a renegade splinter from the Official IRA, when the Officials wanted to retreat from armed actions in Northern Ireland, while many of those who formed the Provisionals thought the Officials weren't doing enough to protect the Catholics in the area as new sectarian clashes had started to break out.
** A split happened in the left-wing Irish National Liberation Army (themselves a splinter group from the IRA who opposed the sectarianism of some IRA volunteers), who got a splinter faction by the name of Irish People Liberation Organization, who only mostly ever managed to kill other INLA members. The IPLO was ultimately disbanded after the Provisional IRA decided they were a nuisance both for their infighting as well as for selling drugs and killed their leader and kneecapped several IPLO members during a day of coordinated attacks, with the second in command announcing the disbanding two days later.

** The Provisional IRA itself started as a renegade splinter from the Official IRA, when the Officials wanted to retreat from armed actions in Northern Ireland, while many of those who formed the Provisionals thought the Officials weren't doing enough to protect the Catholics in the area as new sectarian clashes had started to break out.

** In ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', HYDRA and the man who became the Red Skull fall out with Nazi Germany early on, although unlike many examples of this trope, it seems that [[DragonWithAnAgenda he had his own agenda all along]] rather than splitting off over ideological differences that cropped up later.

# The writer doesn't want to portray some organization, nation or religion as entirely evil. It may be a real-world institution, or an institution from this fictional world which was previously described as at least semi-decent. But the author still wants villains belonging to it, so they invent a renegade group.

Note that it doesn't apply to out and out turncoats: the faction must still keep the general ideas of the original; only with less benevolent policies. It may, however, adhere to ideals that the ''original'' faction has abandoned. If the factions are religious in nature, related to TheHeretic. Can result in EnemyCivilWar. RenegadeRussian is a common nation-specific subtrope, since Russians and Soviets get this treatment especially often. If the original organization was bad-ish, but not bad enough, this may result in TheGoodTheBadAndTheEvil. This may be used to provide an inversion of MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch by setting up an antagonist, [[ContemptCrossfire then revealing that the rest of their faction doesn't like them either.]]

*** Team Trinity claims to be part of Celestial Being, sharing the similar technology and goal of eliminating warfare. However, the Trinities are much more ruthless, attacking without provocation nor mercy. Eventually, the two groups come into conflict.

** Halfway through ''R2'', [[spoiler:[[TheStarscream Starscream and Schneizel]] manage to temporarily seize control of the Decepticon regime thanks to their surprise attack with Damocles. Said attack wipes out almost half of the Autobots and Black Knights, and seemingly succeeds in killing Megatron. With most of their enemies eliminated, the rogue faction -- composed of Starscream, Schneizel, the Constructicons and the few members of the Britannian Royal family that were not killed or defected to the heroes side -- plans to [[ApocalypseHow bombard Earth]] with the station's cannons and then re-establish the Britannian Empire off-world as a Decepticon vassal state. Their reign is short-lived, however, with Megatron (who stole V.V.'s Code and is thus now immortal) returning, alongside the Predacon, and with help from Slipstream, Thundercracker and Sky-Byte [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal (who all got tired of Starscream's jackass attitude)]] infiltrate the Damocles, kill all the rebels and take control of the station for themselves.]]

** A faction of the Krogan, enraged over [[spoiler:the bulk of the species voluntarily being absorbed by the Zerg]], break off and go their own way.

* In ''Fanfic/OperationSoulmate'', the Splinter Cell broke off from the main Kids Next Door a long time ago, and was responsible for the deaths of many adults.

** In ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', HYDRA and the man who became the Red Skull fall out with Nazi Germany early on, although unlike many examples of this trope it seems that [[DragonWithAnAgenda he had his own agenda all along]] rather than splitting off over ideological differences that cropped up later.

* The Crimson Jihad in ''Film/TrueLies'' is a splinter group that broke off of a larger Islamic terrorist organization (possibly Islamic Jihad), apparently because their leader Salim Abu Aziz didn't think the bigger group was crazy enough.

*** The aforementioned Prophets of the Dark Side are actually this twice over, as the same supplemental materials that retconed the Central Committee as a splinter faction reveal that they're not the ''real'' Prophets (which are a legitimate Dark Side cult recruited by Palpatine) but a bunch of fraudulent imposters established by Imperial Intelligence to act as a PropagandaMachine, only to eventually go rogue by means of setting up the Committee as their puppets to take over the Empire for themselves. Since Isard is Director of Imperial Intelligence, this means they're not just defying her pawns but her directly.

** "[[Recap/DoctorWho2013CSTheTimeOfTheDoctor The Time of the Doctor]]" reveals that [[spoiler:Madame Kovarian and the Silence who were terrorizing the Doctor during Series 5 and 6 were this. In the episode, we see the events on Trenzalore that caused them to break away from their organization, travel back in time and attempt to prevent the Doctor from ever reaching the planet in the first place. However, their meddling with the past is [[StableTimeLoop what causes the Doctor to travel to Trenzalore in the first place]]. Plus, the reason why they didn't want the Doctor going to Trenzalore was that if he did, they feared he would release the Time Lords back into reality and the Time War would restart, running the risk of causing equal if not greater devastation as the first time. Their first big plan to stop the Doctor ended up ''destroying the entire universe''.[[note]]However, they might have been planning for the Doctor to do what he did to restore it, which would have erased him if not for his Companions holding onto his memory, which allowed the same twisting of reality to restore him, but that is a ''very'' dangerous game. Considering that it was indicated that the Time War inflicted catastrophic damage on more than just the basic physical plane of the universe, maybe they considered 'just' the destruction of the universe to be a fair price to pay.[[/note]]]]

** This is a major issue with the OPA, which isn't really a unified organization so much as an idea/movement. WordOfGod compares them to real-life revolutionary movements like the Irish Republican Army, with each terrorist cell claiming to be the "real" OPA, though they can occasionally be browbeaten together to act towards a unified goal. Fred Johnson's powerful faction based on Tycho Station is trying to establish the OPA as a legitimate government diplomatically recognized by Earth and Mars, and while Johnson would like to acquire long-range nuclear weapons and/or the proto-molecule, he only wants them as ''deterrents'' to establish balance of power. Other groups are outright terrorists carrying out targeted assassinations, such as the "Black Sky" cell, and the more extreme Ceres cell led by Anderson Dawes. Then there's Marco Inaros's small but utterly ruthless "Free Navy", who are so radical that they basically are a Renegade Splinter Faction compared to the other collective OPA factions. The distinction is that while Dawes is an extremist, pro-war politician, he's still a ''politician'', and can be negotiated with if it serves his own interests (grudgingly deciding to ally with Johnson to explore the Ring in Season 3 so the OPA can present a united front against Earth and Mars). In contrast, Inaros is just a fanatical BloodKnight. [[spoiler:In Season 5, Inaros forces all the other factions to unite under the Free Navy through sheer ruthlessness, hostage-taking, and outright ''assassinating'' both Johnson and Dawes, to the point that by the season finale "OPA" and "Free Navy" are being used synonymously. They even enter into an alliance of convenience with Laconia, the hardliner Mars splinter faction. But then in Season 6, Inaros' growing instability leads to an AntiMutiny situation, with Johnson's former second in command Camina Drummer rallying a growing number of OPA ships as a splinter faction back from the Free Navy and allying with the Earth-Mars joint fleet.]]

*** The rogue NID is this for Earth. While the regular NID is [[TheMenInBlack rather shady]], the renegade group turn outright criminal, stealing technologies that the SGC fails to negotiate for from other planets, including from Earth's allies the Tollans and the Asgard. Eventually, the rogue NID finally splinters off into the Trust once their wealthy backers are arrested. Freed from any government restrictions, the Trust becomes even more violent, conducting chemical attacks and assassination. [[spoiler:When their operatives are driven away from Earth by the SGC, the group manages to get themselves captured and implanted with Goa'uld. Ironically, Ba'al and Athena end up in charge of the Trust and head several major corporations.]]

** The alliance of Minervan Fleet and Special Intelligence Secretariat. The former is a Jovian deserter fleet of military men who wanted a more pro-active and permanent policy against transhumanity, while the latter are former Jovian Space Force Intelligence personnel who lost the power struggle in Jovian politics. Both of them see themselves as the true Jovian government.

** In ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert'', it's a staple to include at least one mission where Soviets fight against each other. In [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3 the third game]], the Allies get some of this too, [[spoiler:led by the President of the United States to boot]].

*** The Spider's syndicate: The Spider is a Fallen mob boss driven by greed rather than hate, so his relationship to humanity has alternated between benefactor, reluctant ally, and antagonist depending on what kind of profit he stands to make from the situation.

*** Kell's Scourge: A rival crime syndicate to the Spider's, led by his brother Siviks. Unlike the Spider, he still wanted humanity exterminated, and snuck a nuclear-armed HumongousMecha into the Last City to accomplish this. He and his syndicate were soundly defeated, and the remnants absorbed by the House of Salvation.

*** The Venatori, a terrorist organization originated from the [[TheEmpire Tevinter Imperium]] that have pledged their allegiance to the Elder One and aim to sow chaos in Southern Thedas. It's stressed by Dorian that these individuals do not represent Tevinter or its values, though he cynically points out that some fellow Magisters do agree with them in private. The current leader of the Imperium, Archon Radonis, doesn't like them either, as he enlists the Inquisition help to root them out and employs a mage-killer to assassinate Venatori leaders.
*** The Red Templars, who have turned to consuming [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity red lyrium to gain immense power at expense of sanity]], are also another splinter faction from the Templar Order. The irony is that in other circumstances, this group and the Venatori would have easily been enemies since the Templars were an organization devoted to fight and contain mages, specially ones from Tevinter, who have a sinister reputation on Southern Thedas.

* ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'' has this for every player race: Humans fight the zealous White Mantle. Charr have the dogmatic Flame Legion. Asura compete with the amoral [[MadScientist Inquest]]. Sylvari fight the [[BlueAndOrangeMorality alien]] Nightmare Court. Nords struggle against the vicious Sons of Svanir. In addition, the Renegades and Separatists are Charr and human factions whose hatred for the other race was so intense that they refuse to abide by the peace treaty between their people. They are now openly hostile to anyone not a member of their faction and wage guerilla warfare against their racial enemies and the "traitors".

*** The kett in Heleus turn out to be a splinter faction of the main kett empire, since the Archon has effectively cut off communication with the kett home world in order to set himself up as de facto ruler of the cluster.

* ''Website/SCPFoundation'': Shortly after the Foundation's establishment, the 05 Council approved a black ops group of soldiers to conduct missions deemed to dirty for the Foundation to publicly conduct and designated them "The Insurgency". But after some time, the group went rogue and defected from the Foundation, becoming the Chaos Insurgency, a group of interest who seek to weaponize anomalies.

* PlayedForLaughs in one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheTick''. The City is invaded by a group of Swiss super-criminals (sporting Swiss Army knife-style weapons, of course). The Tick (in a moment of near-lucidity) expresses confusion, because he thought that the Swiss were strictly neutral. The baddies laugh and say they don't represent the Swiss ''government''. "We are -- how you say? -- criminals!"

* The Khmer Rouge were Cambodian communists trained and supplied by both North Vietnam and the Viet Cong during UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar. Following the falls of Phnom Penh and Saigon and subsequent end of the war, the Khmer Rouge begin attacking all of their perceived enemies, [[BullyingADragon including the much better equipped and trained Vietnamese]]. This backfires spectacularly for them, as the Vietnamese simply elect to invade Cambodia and overthrow them.
* In 1997 the Irish Republican Army (IRA) called a ceasefire in their armed insurgency against the UK government and held a meeting in which the majority of the IRA leadership decided to put down arms for good and instead find a political solution by backing the Northern Ireland peace process, which would eventually result in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Not all of the IRA leaders agreed with this though, and a couple of them wanted to continue the armed insurgency. These dissidents eventually formed a splinter group, calling themselves the "Real Irish Republican Army" (RIRA), and continued using IRA's old terror bombing methods throughout the late 1990s, and even a couple of further sporadic bombings during the 2000s. The most recent significant development the RIRA went through happened in 2012, where they merged with the Irish vigilante group, Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD), and formed the New Irish Republican Army (NIRA), ushering in a new wave of small scale terror bombings and shootings which has so far lasted throughout the 2010s.
** The Provisional IRA itself started as a renagade splinter from the Official IRA, when the Officials wanted to retreat from armed actions in Northern Ireland, while many of those who formed the Provisionals thought the Officials weren't doing enough to protect the Catholics in the area as new secterian clashes had started to break out.
** A split happened in the left wing Irish National Liberation Army (themselves a splinter group from the IRA who opposed the sectarianism of some IRA volunteers), who got a splinter faction by the name of Irish People Liberation Organization, who only mostly ever managed to kill other INLA members. The IPLO was ulitmately disbanded after the Provisional IRA decided they were a nuisance both for their infighting as well as for selling drugs and killed their leader and kneecapped several IPLO members during a day of coordinated attacks, with the second in command announcing the disbanding two days later.
** On the Loyalist side, the Ulster Volunteer Force experienced a split in the 1990's as one commander started his own group the Loyalist Volunteer Force.
** Both sides had straw splinter (Protestant Action Forece and Catholis Reaction Force respectively) groups that were used to take claim for actions the main group didn't want to take credit for, especially secterian reprisal attacks targetting civillians.

* One theory states that Peto's Paradox[[note]]Scientific studies have shown that cancer is less likely to aversely affect larger animals than smaller ones, despite cancer starting when one of your cells goes bad, and larger animals having exponentially many more cells.[[/note]] may be solved thanks to this trope. Cancer cells are effectively mutant rebels, developing large colonies that eat up resources and muscle in on important organs and infrastructure. However, since cancer cells only got this way by nature of being unstable, it is inevitably likely that one of these unstable cancer cells will mutate ''again'', turning into a new renegade splinter colony, which then begins competing against the original colony, hindering its efforts to consume and expand. If either colony wins the war or grows beyond it, the cycle continues with more splinter cells. This chain of self-destruction is so persistent that with a large enough body, none of the cancer colonies will ever grow to life-threatening proportions.

* After the main [[UsefulNotes/{{Mormonism}} LDS Church]] banned [[PolyAmory polygamy]], numerous factions split off with numbers ranging from a few dozen to maybe a few hundred who continued the practice. They tend to be run as cults, isolated from larger communities and with luddite tendencies.

* In ''Fanfic/OperationSoulmate'', the Splinter Cell broke off from the main Kids Next Door a long time ago, and was responsible for the Bojinka attacks in 1995.

* In ''Fanfic/OperationSoulmate'', the Splinter Cell broke off from the main Kids Next Door a long time ago, and has killed adults.

* In ''Fanfic/OperationSoulmate'', the Splinter Cell broke off from the Kids Next Door some time ago, and is willing to kill adults.

* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': Two morally gray characters in ''Solitary Man'' belong to a group that split off from the Watchers due to believing that they needed to fight evil themselves rather than rely on the Slayer. The principle is an admirable one, but they also think that more people should be KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade.

[[folder:Film]]

** Kuvira's army started out as one to Zaofu's security force, hurrying off to restore order to the Earth Kingdom due to Kuvira seeing Su's hesitation as cowardice. Kuvira becomes powerful and popular enough that when she ousts the current Earth Kingdom heir, she is greeted with applause.
* The Crystal Gems in ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' broke away from their Homeworld. In an {{inver|tedTrope}}sion of the usual trope, the Crystal Gems are the good guys here, seeking to protect Earth instead of [[PlanetLooters exploiting it]]. The earliest (chronologically speaking) of their appearances is when [[OddlySmallOrganisation it's just Rose and Pearl]] -- the Homeworld Gems are still terrified of the pair, and they would grow into a strong enough force to fight the Homeworld forces off Earth altogether.

* ''Manga/OnePiece'': The antagonists of the movie ''[[Anime/OnePieceFilmZ Film: Z]]'' are the Neo-Marines, a group of Marines who went rogue from the regular Navy because they felt that even [[InsaneAdmiral Fleet Admiral Sakazuki]] wasn't going far enough to deal with pirates. To rectify what they see as the problem, they intend to [[spoiler: destroy the ''entire Grand Line'' and then spread out from there to purge all pirates elsewhere]], regardless of civilian casualties.

* ''Fanfic/ShadowsOverMeridian'' has an interesting example wherein most of the faction doesn't ''know'' that they're renegade: [[spoiler: when Elyon orders her northern army to [[KnowWhenToFoldEm end the siege of Snowpoint and withdraw to the capital to regroup]], Vera Bexley refuses to abandon [[YouKilledMyFather her quest for revenge on the Mogriffs]] and goes rogue, tricking her friends into believing that they've been ordered to go on a covert mission to assassinate the Mogriff leader Metalbeak (the main target of Vera's vendetta).]]

-->'''Mac''': They're being held hostage by a militant splinter faction of Up With People.\\
'''Harry''': ''[shakes head]'' [[TakeThat It was only a matter of time...]]

** ''Series/StarTrekPicard'': The antagonists of Season 3 are revealed to be [[spoiler: a group of Changelings who broke off from the Great Link due to refusing to accept the peace treaty at the end of the Dominion War]], and have been working to infiltrate and undermine the Federation ever since. They're in fact so renegade that they [[spoiler: establish an alliance with ''the Borg'' to enable the latter's assimilation of Starfleet.]]

* The Taliban and Al-Qaeda were splinters of the Mujaheddin, rebels who fought against the Soviet occupation. They broke off because they were enforcing Sharia law in a case considered too extreme for the Mujaheddin - not all of whom were that Islamists, it was really an alliance of rebels with several differing ideologies overall (some were even Maoists themselves since they had Chinese backing). Many Mujaheddin formed the post-war government, which was later toppled by the Taliban, and the remnants of this government formed the "Northern Alliance", which helped the NATO forces during the 2001 invasion and formed the core of the Afghan government that ruled until the Taliban's return in 2021.

** A split happened in the left wing Irish National Liberation Army (themselves a splinter group from the IRA who opposed the sectarianism of some IRA volunteers), who got a splinter faction by the name of Irish People Liberation Organization, who only mostly ever managed ot kill other INLA members. The ILPO was ulitmately disbanded after the Provisional IRA decided they were a nuisance both for their infighting as well as for selling drugs and killed their leader and kneecapped several IPLO members during a day of coordinated attacks, with the second in command announcing the disbanding two days later.

** A similar split happened in the left wing Irish National Liberation Army, who got a splinter faction by the name of Irish People Liberation Organization, who only mostly ever managed ot kill other INLA members. The ILPO was ulitmately disbanded after the Provisional IRA decided they were a nuisance both for their infighting as well as for selling drugs and killed their leader and kneecapped several IPLO members during a day of coordinated attacks, with the second in command announcing the disbanding two days later.

** ComicBook/{{Hydra}} was initially this for UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, created due to the desire to maintain the relevance of ComicBook/CaptainAmerica and other wartime heroes in spite of the WartimeCartoon ValuesDissonance. This has created historical acknowledgement issues of its own, particularly in ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'': UsefulNotes/WorldWarII ended up depicted as being waged mostly against Hydra while the Nazis are relegated to a HistoricalInJoke. Hydra itself has had several splinter groups: Characters/{{AIM}}, [[Characters/MarvelComicsTheHand the Hand]] (although the Hand consider themselves to be the originals and Hydra the splinter group), and the Secret Empire, among others.

* ''Fanfic/CodePrime'': Halfway through ''R2'', [[spoiler:[[TheStarscream Starscream and Schneizel]] manage to temporarily seize control of the Decepticon regime thanks to their surprise attack with Damocles. Said attack wipes out almost half of the Autobots and Black Knights, and seemingly succeeds in killing Megatron. With most of their enemies eliminated, the rogue faction -- composed of Starscream, Schneizel, the Constructicons and the few members of the Britannian Royal family that were not killed or defected to the heroes side -- plans to [[ApocalypseHow bombard Earth]] with the station's cannons and then re-establish the Britannian Empire off-world as a Decepticon vassal state. Their reign is short-lived, however, with Megatron (who stole V.V.'s Code and is thus now immortal) returning, alongside the Predacon, and with help from Slipstream, Thundercracker and Sky-Byte [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal (who all got tired of Starscream's jackass attitude)]] infiltrate the Damocles, kill all the rebels and take control of the station for themselves.]]
** Later on, [[spoiler:Thundercracker, Slipstream and Sky-Byte, along with Steeljaw, break off from Megatron when they learn the full extent of Neo-Ragnarok.]]