Fallen Hero

"You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!"

Luke Skywalker: There is still good in him.
Obi-Wan: He's more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.

— Return of the Jedi

Not all villains are born. Some are made, and none are more tragic than the Fallen Hero. As the name implies, the Fallen Hero used to be a hero before doing a Face–Heel Turn. They may even have been an Ideal Hero or another equally optimistic archetype, up until the moment when they suffered something bad enough for them to lose all faith in good and idealism, be it the loss of a loved one, too many good deeds coming back to bite them hard, betrayal by someone they trusted the most, too much distrust from those who should have been allies, or some other faith-shattering event. It might even be a drawn out process of seduction to The Dark Side or fall from grace. Some Evil Old Folks happened to be this type in their younger days.

What they choose to do about it determines what they become:

• If they retreat into themselves and fight evil mercilessly to dull the pain, they become an Anti-Hero, though if this fight is motivated by vengeance, they may run the risk of becoming like the very monsters they have sworn to destroy.
• If the loss of faith with humanity and/or society and government makes them decide to do something drastic to "fix" it, they become an Anti-Villain, most commonly a Knight Templar or Dark Messiah.
• Alternately, if they just jump off the slippery slope and embrace chaos and the destruction of humanity as the only solution to their pain, they'll become a straight up cackling Card-Carrying Villain. Especially those who only became a hero for fame and glory, rather than for any good cause.
• Or they'll be a fusion of the second and third examples and decide that killing/destroying everything is the ONLY way to save EVERYONE from the pain/pointlessness of existence, often becoming a Straw Nihilist and an Omnicidal Maniac.
• They might withdraw from society, become a hermit or drunkard, and ignore the ongoing state of the world. If the current generation of heroes meets them, the fallen hero will mock how their deeds are useless. Most likely, however, they will help the new heroes in the hopes that they won't suffer the same fate.
• Or they can ditch all of their once good qualities and become a Complete Monster.

They'll use their not-inconsiderable powers and abilities to do it, too. Often, they'll twist healing powers to evil ends, or allow pain to fester by simply denying the use of their powers for good. Where once the Barrier Maiden wanted to heal the world, she'll now spread misery to speed its destruction. The Messianic Archetype who wanted to save the world now wants its damnation. The Gunslinger, once wanting to bring justice to the frontier, now wants nothing but vengeance and blood. Many of these made the protagonist's journey to villainy.

Usually revealed after a "Not So Different" Remark. Almost always gets a Start of Darkness, and often implies Became Their Own Antithesis. Christopher Booker's sixth basic plot, Tragedy, uses this character arc, with the Fallen Hero as the main character. Compare Face–Heel Turn, The Dark Side Will Make You Forget. See also Fallen Angel, Tragic Villain, and Tragic Monster. Super-Trope to The Paragon Always Rebels, in which the character has such influence over other good guys that they fall with him or her. When the Fallen Hero used to be a main character in a previous work, they're a Rogue Protagonist.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Literature
  • A Song of Ice and Fire
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Comic Books

• In All Fall Down, Pronto gradually becomes this for the climax.
• Ant-Man: Hank Pym becomes one of these (usually of the retired variety, but occasionally the Anti-Villain version) every couple of years when something bad happens to Jan and/or Ultron does something horrible that he blames himself for.
• Armageddon 2001 is built around this trope. Some time in the year 2001, a legendary hero turns evil and wipes out the superhuman populace, becoming an armor-wearing dictator named Monarch. Matthew Ryder, seeking to figure out his identity and stop his ascension, becomes a guinea pig for time travelling and becomes Waverider, using his powers to figure out who it might be. Though he doesn't discover it before he reveals it himself, it ends up being Hank Hall, the hero Hawk, who flips out and murdered the future Monarch after he killed Dawn Granger/Dove and took over his identity.
• Astro City has El Hombre, an Expy of Batman from Los Angeles. Though he became prominent in the super-hero circle, he became upset at his lack of respect from the populace and his love interest's marriage to someone else. He then hired a super-villain to build a robot to attack the city so he could stop it in a high-profile fight. He was betrayed by the villain, and when it was later revealed that El Hombre commissioned the attack, he became a wanted fugitive and disappeared into his civilian identity.
  • Decades later, he tries a similar ruse, killing low-level supervillains to unite their ilk against him, eventually gathering them all in one place, and wiping them out in his new heroic identity as El Guerrero. His former sidekick, Bravo, while being ashamed of El Hombre's actions, still holds a great deal of respect for the great man and the hero he once was.
• About a million alternate future stories depict either Batman or Superman as this, frequently with the other one trying to pull them out of it (to provide one of the most recent examples, the Injustice: Gods Among Us game series and off-shoot comics).
  • Batman: Last Knight on Earth sees a clone of Batman takes on the now-villainous original.
  • Dark Nights: Metal features the DC Universe besieged by seven alternate universe versions of Batman with various shades of this. And their goal is to unleash an entire multiverse of fallen heroes upon the world.
  • In Batman (Grant Morrison), the International Club of Heroes, a group of vigilantes who all took inspiration from Batman, have taken on shades of this due to none of them having nearly as successful a career as their inspiration. Musketeer accidentally killed a man, was sent to an asylum, and, now retired, lives off the royalties of his autobiography. Knight's career as a former sidekick left him riddled with trauma, to the point that his sidekick, the current Squire, has to work to keep him healthy. Ranger changed his name to Dark Ranger and became an Unscrupulous Hero, openly killing criminals. Legionary lost his city and became a Jaded Washout, his sex-symbol body now a pile of flab. And Wingman became a full-on villain, his massive inferiority complex causing him to take part in a murder plot to get revenge and respect. Only Man-of-Bats and Gaucho are still completely heroic.
• Birthright:
  • Mikey Rhodes was just a kid forced into the The Chosen One's role to save a fantasy realm from God-King Lore. During their destined confrontation, he failed to defeat his arch-enemy and struck a bargain with him instead to send him back home, and in turn, he would become his agent.
  • It's revealed that the comic's Big Bad Lore himself also qualifies, as he was the chosen one before and he already saved his realm in the past, but something turned him into what he is today.
  • Later in the series, Mastema, one of the Five Mages who sought to liberate Terrenos from Lore's control and placed a protective barrier to defend Earth from his invasion, goes off into the deep end when she senses that his coming is inevitable and decides to allow both worlds being destroyed so she can create an new one. She becomes so deluded that when an alternate option is presented that doesn't require Earth being destroyed, she persists in her genocidal goal and leaves the heroes with no other option left but to put her down.
• Black Panther was one of these (of the retired/bitter variety) at the end of Christopher Priest's run, but this development and the fatal brain aneurysm that caused it were both ignored by subsequent writers.
• Captain America: William Burnside was a devoted member of Captain America's fanclub during WW2, who stumbled upon a previously unknown copy of Dr. Erskine's formula for Super Serum and volunteered to become Steve Rogers' replacement during the 1950s, when Rogers was presumed dead. Although he battled Communist agitators as a loyal protector of his country, unknown faults in the serum eventually drove him mad and he was placed into cryogenic suspension until a way to undo the damage to his mind could be found. Released in the 1970s by a paranoid guard who believed Nixon's plan to open diplomatic communications with China was a Communist plot, he battled his former idol only to be defeated and denounced as a broken traitor. When next he was released, a combination of future shock and brainwashing by Doctor Faustus further shattered his already damaged mind. Now he's a broken, twisted shadow of his former self, a man so determined to return America to "the good old days" that he will team up with terrorists and supervillains to make it happen.
• Daredevil:
  • At the beginning of Kevin Smith's run, Karen Page was stuffed into a fridge. Then, Brian Michael Bendis took over and his identity was exposed to the public, and eventually, he was incarcerated for obstruction of justice. After beating the rap, his new wife, Milla, suffered a psychotic breakdown and the marriage dissolved (Matt cheating on her with Dakota North happened in between). By the time Lady Bullseye started to kill his closest allies to resurrect them as zombie ninja slaves, Matt finally said "screw this" and abandoned his life as Matt Murdock to become the leader of the Hand. Though still a Technical Pacifist, the crossover Shadowland changed this with Marvel promoting Daredevil as the new "greatest super-villain of the Marvel Universe".
  • The non-canon miniseries Daredevil: End of Days shows a version of Daredevil who continued down this path (though seemingly without control of the Hand), culminating in his murder of The Kingpin, and then being killed by Bullseye. And that's just the beginning of the first issue!
• Avengers member (and most-hated one, both with the fandom and even in-universe among members of the team itself) Dr. Druid had a 1995 series, Druid (1995), that was about him becoming all about this. When it opens, he'd become washed-up and essentially a cult leader with some people staying at his penthouse, and starts to go mad with his new powers, giving into his anger and lust for power until Damion Hellstrom murdered him. Then during Squadron Supreme (2015), he became a tyrant on Weirdworld upon discovering that he could manifest a body there. That said, when he was seen in 2019, Dr. Strange, Surgeon Supreme, he seemed to be back on the side of the angels, but the series ended before it could be confirmed to be the case or if it was merely a ruse.
• In The DCU series Justice League Task Force, the hero, Triumph, was lost for decades in a time warp, and returned to join the Task Force as its leader. His difficulties in adapting to the new times added to the desertion of Martian Manhunter and Aquaman from the TF's ranks (which caused the government to close it down due to the real Justice League returning), ended with him broke and being harassed by common thugs by the time of JLA (1997). The inadvertent loss of his soul left him Not Himself and he came under the influence of an evil 5th-dimensional imp named Lkz, he wreaked havoc and mentally dominated his former allies into fighting the JLA. When he failed, he was frozen screaming.
  • Interestingly, an alternate future shows Triumph's best friend, the Ray, becoming one of these, with Triumph himself and the Flash (Bart Allen) as the only two heroes left, trying to keep him under control...while still being best friends and hanging out to watch sports and such.
• Godzilla: Rulers of Earth: King Caesar and Mecha-King Ghidorah.
• From Marvel's Golden Age, there was Thomas Halloway, the original Angel. In those times, he was a hero who fought the Nazis alongside the Sub-Mariner and the original Human Torch. But in modern times as an elderly man, he started to take morally questionable means of fighting criminals, financing and running the murderous vigilante group Scourges of the Underworld, which has assassinated a large number of lesser supervillains. (The worst part is, while he ran the group, the the Scourges ultimately reported to the Red Skull, someone all the heroes of the Angel's time opposed.) The USAgent confronts him eventually in his mini-series; the former hero is wounded and arrested, as are many Scourges, but the Angel himself was released for lack of any concrete evidence. It was assumed he resumed a quiet life. Still, the heroic Angel lives on in the form of his grandson Jason, who was given his costume during The Marvels Project limited series.
• Both Sinestro and later his Arch-Enemy Hal Jordan are Green Lantern Corps members who turned evil. Sinestro wanted to enforce order, so he became a Knight Templar dictator of his home planet, Korugar. Years later, after seeing his home city nuked, among other things, Hal Freaked Out and destroyed the Green Lantern Corps and tried to remake the universe. Hal was later retconned into being possessed by the Anthropomorphic Personification of fear itself, and Sinestro was influenced by a demon telling him a prophecy that Korugar would destroy itself if order wasn't enforced.
• Heroes Reborn introduced a new version of the Swordsman for its version of the Avengers. Then in the 2000 Fifth Week Event that revisited the world, he was revealed to be its version of Deadpool — and that he snapped upon learning about Franklin Richards created his universe and goes on a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum.
• The Incredible Hulk: Among one of the Hulk's most dangerous foes is a future version of himself, the Maestro, an insane, hedonistic, sadistic tyrant.
• Irredeemable centers around The Plutonian, a Superman-like superhero who snaps violently after a long and thankless career and proceeds to become the irredeemable Big Bad set to obliterate the world that he once protected. Inversely, there's the spin-off Incorruptible, which focuses on former Supervillain Max Damage who, in the wake of The Plutonian's rampage of destruction, decides to become a hero. The title reflecting Max's belief the he has to be perfectly heroic, that anything less would result in a backslide into evil.
  • Irredeemable is written by Mark Waid, who co-created Triumph (mentioned above), and has confirmed that a lot of the original ideas behind Triumph (who Waid wrote very little of) ended up in Irredeemable.
• The Long Halloween, the series that inspired Nolan when he was writing the script for The Dark Knight, has a Harvey Dent that worked alongside Batman and Commissioner Gordon. We later find out that Harvey may not have even been responsible for some of the Holiday murders, it may have been his wife trying to get Harvey to come back and end the mob's harassment of her family. A closer inspection reveals plot holes with this revelation, and it's vague whether she did it or was just crazy. This is only one version of Two-Face's origin, but all the ones worth mentioning show him as working with Batman before turning into Two-Face.
• Magneto jumps around between this, Anti-Villain, Anti-Hero, and Well-Intentioned Extremist.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): Rarity, who succumbs to the Nightmare Force's More than Mind Control to become their new queen. She returned to the good guys' side at the end of the Nightmare Force arc though.
• The Punisher qualifies. Before becoming the Knight Templar vigilante he's notorious for being, Frank was a veteran in the United States Marines Special Forces; for heroism in the line of duty, he was decorated with numerous medals, including the Purple Heart. The brutal attack that killed his family caused him to desert just hours before he would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• Jason Todd, as the Red Hood, is treated as this by Batman and the rest of the Bat-Family: having been revived from the dead after being brutally murdered by The Joker only to find that Batman hadn't put down the Clown once and for all, Jason snapped. Denouncing the Bats' Thou Shalt Not Kill code, he became a "lethal justice" style vigilante using his training and skill with firearms to suppress criminals through murder and intimidation. The story "Battle for the Cowl" establishes that Jason's fall into bloodlust weighs so heavily on Batman that his last will and testament has only this to say to Jason: "You're broken, and I couldn't fix you. Maybe someone else can." His reaction to this message was to turn full blown supervillain and try to murder his little brothers.
• Richard Dragon, most famous for being the best martial artist in the DCU, was one of these for a while, closing himself off from his emotions and blankly fighting people to death every night in an underground fighting ring until Bronze Tiger dragged him out of it.
• After being killed by Deadpool during Secret Empire, Phil Coulson came back as a villain working for Mephisto in The Avengers (Jason Aaron), culminating in him warping reality to make himself a President Evil in a universe where Mephisto is worshiped in Heroes Reborn (2021). Then again, said event also revealed Coulson engaged in waterboarding as a soldier, hence why he ended up in Hell.
• In Shadow War, we find out that this happened to Geo-Force, who had his entire country destroyed when Talia al Ghul decided to wipe out Leviathan.
• Shakara: The Big Bad responsible for most of the destruction was revealed to be Cinnibar Brenneka, the heroic warrior who built the Shakara empire in the first place.
• Sin City has Jack Rafferty, who was once a hero cop but eventually degraded to the level of an alcoholic Domestic Abuser. Word of God states that his story will eventually be told.
• Halfway through Star Wars Legacy, Darth Krayt is revealed to be A'Sharad Hett, a Clone Wars-era Jedi Master who survived Order 66 and later fell to the dark side.
• Superboy-Prime. He begins his career battling the Anti Monitor, the DC Universe's greatest threat, and is immediately forced into Limbo with his home universe destroyed. After years in Limbo, he returns, convinced that Earth's heroes are screwing it all up and ultimately decides that this universe needs to be replaced by a better one.
• Supergirl, specifically the Linda Danvers incarnation, may or may not qualify. At the end of Many Happy Returns she was forced to send the original Supergirl back to her own reality, where she was Doomed by Canon. This left Linda broken and she promptly gave up the costume. A later series has her end up in Hell off-panel.
• In Tales of the Jedi, Ulic Qel-Droma famously falls to the dark side. Though Sith poison helped him, he was already well on the way thanks to his ill-advised plan to infiltrate the enemy by pretending to be evil, and then compounding that with a thirst for vengeance when his master dies in battle. As a result, he turns against the Republic, joins the Big Bad, and helps to turn or kill many Jedi. He only turns back after he kills his brother and realizes how far he's fallen, then gets cut off from the Force by his former lover, Nomi Sunrider.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye portrays Megatron this way. Once, he was a voice of hope that the corrupt Senate and Functionist Council would be cast down. However, the attempt by the establishment to silence him and the apparent death of his mentor caused him to go steadily off the rails, until the Decepticons ended up, at best, no better than the corrupt establishment they fought. When he realises how far he'd fallen and gets a second chance in the Functionist universe, he ends up as that dimension's equivalent to Optimus Prime.
• The Ultimates
  • After his family is killed, Hawkeye goes out for blood and lots of it.
  • When they were young, Loki was one-third of a Sibling Team with his brothers.
• When Adrian Chase started off as Vigilante, he refused to harm emergency service officials or the victims of the criminals he went after, but slowly this changed until he ditches these vitures completely. This ended up ending one of the factors that resulted in him taking his own life.
• Warlord of Mars has Xerius, once a proud White Martian defender who fought valiantly alongside his beloved Xaraya. After her death at the hands of the First-Born and the Okarans and having his own consciousness trapped inside crystals that kept him alive for thousands of years, he grew absolutely heartless and cruel. While masquerading as Tardos Mors, he replaces John Carter as Warlord of Mars, employs the vicious Warhoons as his enforcers, instigates a genocidal campaign against not only the Black and Yellow Peoples, but his own people as well, reducing them to slaves whom he has 10% killed for no good reason, except spite and disgust. He still thinks himself as a savior, however, as he justify his actions as liberating the Red and Green Peoples who have been oppressed by polar races for millennia.
• While still a "hero", Rorschach from Watchmen became a murderous vigilante after failing to save a girl killed by her kidnapper.
• In W.I.T.C.H. Nerissa used to be the leader of the previous generation of Guardians and the Keeper of the Heart before letting herself be corrupted and murdering Cassidy, who had replaced her as the Keeper because the Oracle had seen she was letting herself being corrupted and hoped to prevent this. Also Will, the leader and Keeper of the current generation, fears to become this since she faced Nerissa, but managed to stay on the side of good.
• Wonder Woman (1987): By the time Diana comes across him the White Magician is a black market arms dealer working for the mob using his girlfriend in the press and engineered heroics to maintain his reputation as a hero, but in the past he really was a superhero before giving in to his desire for power and fame.
• X-Men: Hank McCoy/the Beast was once one of the most stalwart and heroic members of the X-Men and Avengers, but following Cyclops' schism of the remaining mutants, he began doing more morally unethical acts and was unrepentant over it. This continued once Krakoa was established, going so far as to make numerous Wolverine clones to do his bidding.

Fan Works

• All For Luz: Luz's Vigilante Man persona, All For One, becomes this to her town Gravesfield when she becomes Cop Killer in front of horrified witnesses when squad led by a Dirty Cop sheriff tries to perform Police Brutality on her and turns them in to Ludicrous Gibs when Blinded by Rage.
  They saw her kill police officers. Whatever attempt to be a hero there was for her was now gone. No one liked or routed for a Cop Killer, even if that cop was a Dirty Cop.
• Better Bones AU:
  • Hawkfrost was originally a noble, if flawed, cat who defended Reedwhisker. Being failed by a Clan which hasn't abandoned Tigerstar's ideology and encouraged by that Clan to be his father's heir in upholding "Thistle law" leads to his descent to villainy.
  • Sleekwhisker starts out as an idealist who has important, if scattered ideas about reforming the Clans' approach towards outsiders, but she gradually becomes a ruthlessly loyal member of Darktail's cult.
• Code Prime: As this series combines the event's of Code Geass and the Transformers Aligned Continuity, Megatron's backstory is the same as the one he had in Transformers Prime: Cybertronian identification number D-16 was born at the bottom of Cybertron's social hierarchy (essentially equivalent to an Untouchable) but there through sheer drive and force of will, he made a name for himself as a mighty gladiator and later as a revolutionary determined to challenge the corrupt system and inequality among the masses. His inspiration drew the attention of young Orion Pax who shared many of then-Megatron's visions and ideals and after many collaborations, the two became close as brothers. However, when he finally got his audience with the ruling council, Megatron soon revealed his true colors, proclaiming his intention of overthrowing the current administration with force and requested (read: demanded) to be named the next Prime. Orion promptly stepped in and proposed his own peaceful and benevolent vision for a new Cybertronian order and subsequently won the favor of the High Council. Megatron, however, saw this as betrayal, and following this spitefully severed his ties with Orion and would soon go to wage a war that would consume the whole planet...
• A Crooked Man: Tony Stark and Reed Richards are publicly exposed of using very unethical methods to enforce the SRA and leading to the Civil War, and they are treated as pariahs by the public. Even Doctor Doom lampshades to Reed that the public despises fallen heroes far more than villains and monsters.
• Bound Destinies Trilogy: The Fierce Deity is stated to be this in Blood and Spirit. It is revealed that he was once the chosen hero of Termina's guardian goddess, Terminus, just as Link is to Zelda/Hylia. He fought Majora and won, only to end up being corrupted into what he is now. Terminus has Din, Nayru, and Farore send Link and Zelda to Termina to help and after Link has weakened the Fierce Deity, she and Zelda use the Song of Healing in an attempt to restore him to his former self; unfortunately, by that point, he has been far too corrupted by Majora to be saved, and is instead converted into the Fierce Deity's Mask. Though heartbroken over the loss, Terminus is nonetheless comforted by the knowledge that at least her hero is finally free from Majora's control.
• The Chaotic Masters:
  • The titular tricksters had a habit back in the day of seducing various heroines into their harems, at which point they'd help destroy their own kingdoms and aid the Masters in their rampages.
  • In addition to the canonical case of Chase Young, it's revealed that Wuya also used to be a Xiaolin Dragon before becoming corrupted by a lust for power.
• Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles) is a notoriously Dark Fic that features Pinkie Pie. The same pony who represented the Element of Laughter and helped to defeat Nightmare Moon and Discord is now a homicidal maniac with cannibalistic intentions.
• Digimon Trinity: One of the Canon Welding elements has Takeru "TK" Takaishi from Digimon Adventure/02 grow up to take over the role of Mitsuo Yamaki from Digimon Tamers.
• The Equestria Chronicles:
  • Princess Celestia slowly goes mad from the anxiety of having to constantly watch out for threats to her reign, and the psychological trauma of her internal struggle with the dark magic she accepted in order to live forever and create the cutie mark spell.
  • Princess Luna also falls victim to this, as she becomes the Knight Templar Nightmare Moon, hoping to put an end to the excesses and abuses of freedom that her sister has caused. In the end, Celestia decides to eliminate her sister rather than accept her help with ruling the kingdom.
• Equestria Divided: The Mane Six went from being True Companions and the most important defenders of Equestria to Ax-Crazy, racist warlords (or a crazy undead and/or Eldritch Abomination, in Pinkie's case) warring with each other for total dominance of the country they used to defend.
• Equestria: A History Revealed: General Thunderhide was a well-loved war hero who joined Nightmare Moon's rebellion due to believing that no true change can come while Celestia remains in power. He knows what he's doing is wrong, but sees it as the only option available to him.
• Fallout: Equestria:
  • Two-thirds of the Mane Six descends into villainy in the backstory, set during the war between Equestria and the zebra nation. Twilight Sparkle becomes an amoral Mad Scientist and Evilutionary Biologist obsessed with finding a way to turn normal ponies into alicorns, Rarity experiments with dark magic and creates propaganda that encourages hatred against zebras^note She eventually has a My God, What Have I Done? moment and literally sacrifices her soul in an attempt to redeem her friends, but by then it's far too late., Pinkie Pie becomes a drug-addled psychopathic torturer who runs the Equestrian equivalent of the Ministry of Love, Rainbow Dash becomes a Blood Knight General Ripper obsessed with her own martial prowess and kill count, and Fluttershy passes military secrets to the zebras out of a misguided sense of kindness, directly leading to Equestria's destruction. Only Applejack retains her moral compass, and it gets her horribly disfigured in an assassination attempt.
  • Also Red Eye. Everything we see of his backstory points to him being an expy of the Lone Wanderer, but by the time he appears in the story, he's fully into Well-Intentioned Extremist territory and willing to do absolutely anything to save the wastes.
• Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters
  • It's eventually revealed that the Tracker was originally Didier, one of the great heroes of Meridian's ancient past. How exactly this came to pass is currently unknown, however.
  • Once a heroic young woman who took her job of protecting the Known Worlds seriously, Nerissa frustration with Kandrakar's hands-off approach led to her becoming a Knight Templar determined to conquer the worlds herself.
• Harry's Madness: Harry Potter razes Hogwarts to the ground and turns the DA into an army for world domination, all because he didn't get enough support in fifth year.
• Horseshoes and Hand Grenades: Gentaro, having been placed into a More than Mind Control situation from Ophiuchus. Ryusei also becomes this, due to Tachibana brainwashing him and converting him into a cyborg in an 'attempt' to fix all the mistakes he did.
• Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger: Darth Nihilus was once a Jedi who helped Revan defeat the Mandalorians. As he fought in more and more battles, his hatred of the Mandalorians grew to the point where he fell under the influence of the Dark Side. Then, when the mass shadow generator was unleashed during the Battle of Malachor V, almost all of Nihilus's comrades-in-arms were killed and he was irreversibly transformed into a Power Parasite, forcing him to feed off the Life Energy of the few survivors. He was later found and rescued the Sith, who offered to help him control his new powers and gave him the name "Nihilus".
• Kaiju Revolution: King Ghidorah once helped Godzilla in protecting the world from various malevolent Kaiju, but went insane and turned on him due to Ghidorah's hatred of chemical-based life.
• Karma in Retrograde: Touya Todoroki was an aspiring hero student at U.A. with the potential to surpass his father, the current number one hero. He was a gentle and caring older brother to his siblings and wanted nothing more than to rescue them from his father's influence. But somewhere down the line, he underwent a Face–Heel Turn, vanishing off the face of the Earth before reemerging as the villainous Dabi who gleefully participates in murder and arson to tear down hero society. When reverted back to his sixteen-year-old self by a deaging Quirk, he's horrified by his actions and doesn't understand why he turned out the way he did.
• Lamarckian has the Pro Hero Native, who is the father of the Self-Insert Kanna in this universe. With the Cannibalistic Serial Killer Wendigo after him, Native starts expending more and more resources to catch him, and spending less time with his family. It eventually culminates in Native using his wife and daughter as bait for Wendigo, which causes them to leave him in the aftermath, and he spends most of the rest of the fic trying to make amends.
• General Zod in The Last Son was once Krypton's most renowned military commander, and a close friend of Superman's father Jor-El, who even named him the godfather of his son. Unfortunately, the death of his lover Ursa during the Krypton-Shi'ar war drove Zod mad to the point he fired upon Shi'ar ships that had already surrendered. He was found guilty of war crimes and banished to the Phantom Zone until he was accidentally freed on Earth by Cadmus tampering with his cell. Zod took advantage of the fact that his trial wasn't on the records of Superman's Fortress of Solitude prior to Krypton's destruction to earn his trust and secretly plotted to take over Earth.
• Mirror's Image: Amazingly, Chrysalis is one. She used to be Princess Celestia's student and a bearer of the Element of Magic. Then she found out she was a Changeling and was banished. A thousand years of anger and resentment later, and there's little to nothing left of the pony she used to be. And she's not very broken up about it.
• A Moth to a Flame: Thanks to More than Mind Control by King Andrias and the Core, Marcy is now fully onboard with their plans to conquer the multiverse, and is even willing to violently attack her friends when they reject her We Can Rule Together offer and defy those plans.
• Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!: The Nana Shimura of Earth 2014.50 was once a staunch adherent of the ideology that would shape All Might's and generations of Heroes to come. But after the deaths of her husband and her protege, she decided that people needed a powerful figure to look up to in order to create the World of Smiles she dreamed of, taking over the world and ruling it with an iron fist while culling anyone who opposes or even annoys her. She even admits that All Might would have never approved of what she's done, but she feels those ideals are outdated and can only cause further suffering.
• Pony POV Series:
  • In "Epilogue", a Bad Future where Discord won, the Mane Six have been turned into his immortal Co-Dragons and now do his bidding, at best having no idea they were once heroes like Twilight Tragedy and Rarigreed and at worst knowing they were but having no way to escape their fate. Although Liarjack still remains somewhat heroic, as she does her best to save lives, she still has done horrible things like helping kill Queen Cadance. However, the Dark World Series finally sees them rise again.
  • The second Big Bad, Nightmare Whisper, Fluttershy's Superpowered Evil Side born when she couldn't bare the cruelty in the world and tried to fix it, turning into a Well-Intentioned Extremist and trying to conquer the world and force it to be nice. In the end, she's purified with the Elements and becomes The Atoner.
  • Nightmare Mirror, Applejack's Alternate Self who became a Nightmare after her Applebloom didn't escape the events of Story of the Blanks, turning into a truth-obsessed Multiversal Conqueror intending to rid the multiverse of deceit. Thankfully, Applejack manages to team up with five other alternate versions of her (including Liarjack, now back to Applejack) to purify her with the Elements of Harmony, after which Applejack and Orangejack convince her to turn good again. The same journey also shows Nightmares of Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, called Nightmare Manacle and Nightmare Granfalloon respectively.
  • One alternate universe shows the Harmony Queens, a version of the mane six who went Knight Templar, overthrew and imprisoned Celestia and Luna, and took over the world eradicating anything they viewed as Disharmonic and brainwashing ponies en masse with the Elements. According to Word of God, they're based off the Justice Lords from the Justice League.
  • Finally there's Nightmare Eclipse/Paradox, the true Big Bad of the Dark World Series. She's a potential future version of Twilight who went Nightmare to take revenge on Discord for what he did. She then becomes She Who Fights Monsters and trapped Discord in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, erasing billions from existence each loop to feed her grudge and not even caring anymore so long as he suffers.
• Project Dark Jade: The stories' uniting concept is that Jade either becomes an example of this trope or is in the danger of becoming one.
  • Ages of Shadow: This has already happened by the time the story starts. As flashbacks show, the J-Team and Section 13 were overwhelmed by a villain called the Magus King, leaving Jade with no other option but to put on Tarakudo's mask in order to use the Shadowkhan in order to win. This worked, and Jade even defeated Tarakudo and his Generals in a mental battle, but in the process was consumed by the shadow magic, permanently becoming a Shadowkhan and being twisted into wanting to Take Over the World. This ultimately led to Tohru having no choice but to seal her away.
  • Queen of All Oni: Jade becomes this after a spell reawakens her Queen of the Shadowkhan persona. And then in the second half of the story, Jade kidnaps Viper and performs a ritual that transforms her into Hebi, the new General of the Samurai Khan, and conditions her to be utterly loyal to Jade.
  • Webwork: Jade becomes taken over by her Queen of the Shadowkhan persona, which is then compounded by her spending several years (courtesy of Narnia Time that makes it only a few hours on Earth) in the Emptiness with only Tarakudo and the Old Queen as company, while being further transformed into a Shadowkhan/Jorogumo hybrid. By the time she returns to Earth, her morality has been completely twisted.
• Pure Light: Spyro, the one-time savior of the world, is now seeking to destroy it after succumbing to darkness years before the story's start.
• The Shadow Wars: Grey Hoof (originally from Story of the Blanks) was a heroic leader and loving father, whose Start of Darkness came when plagues ravaged Sunney Towne and he could do nothing to protect his Ponies from them. He became increasingly frantic in his desire to prevent these plagues from returning. Eventually, he kills his most beloved daughter Ruby Gift in the delusion that she had the Mark Pox and would die horribly anyway — setting in motion the events leading to the Curse.
• Rocket To Insanity: Rainbow Dash was the Element of Loyalty who helped defeat threats like Nightmare Moon and Discord, but being constantly tormented by nightmares eroded her sanity. Pinkie Pie offering her cupcakes was the final straw that caused Rainbow to snap and made her go against her Element by killing one of her best friends.
• Star Wars Fruits Of Betrayal: Ahsoka Tano takes the Jedi Council turning on her much more personally, to the point that she is in complete emotional and mental anguish. Palpatine, sensing that she is on the verge of breaking, has her kidnapped and brought to Count Dooku so that she may be turned to the Dark Side. She only manages to hold out for about three months before she finally turns, after which she is given the Sith name Darth Cyrin and takes Anakin's place as Palpatine's right hand.
• Vengeance of the Star, which is an alternate take on The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle, has Twilight, who survives an assassination attempt. However, Spike is instead killed by the assassins. The resulting grief for a time makes her more ruthless and she turns into Midnight Sparkle, an evil version of herself.
• War and Peace in Mind has the Red Knight a.k.a. Baron Battle before the story even starts. Once a great hero, his exploits made him eventually grew so frustrated with the incompetency of society that he decided that the only way to fix the problem would be to rule the world.
• The Weaver Option:
  • During the raid on Commorragh, Taylor fights and kills Drazhar. In doing so she confirms he was once Phoenix Lord Arhra.
  • Lelith Hesperax was once a great champion of the Aeldari Empire and worked tirelessly to protect them from enemies within and without. The Fall destroyed all faith she had in her people and since then she has lived only for the thrill of fighting and killing.
  • One of the biggest examples of all: Glory Girl went from one of Brockton Bay's most beloved heroines to a Chaos Sorceress of Tzeentch who casually commits atrocities in pursuing the Path of Glory.

Film — Animated

• Kung Fu Panda: Tai Lung. Adopted by Master Shifu, he was groomed to become protector of the Valley of Peace and the Dragon Warrior. However, it turned out that he was not, in fact, the Dragon Warrior, causing him to lash out. Master Oogway managed to put him down and send him to a prison, but Tai Lung vowed that he will escape one day to claim a right he saw as being denied to him.
• The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: Rex Dangervest is actually Emmet from an alternate timeline in which he was abandoned and left to rot below a dryer, causing him to turn evil.
• Moana: Te Ka, the demon who causes darkness to envelop the world, is a form Te Fiti, the Mother Earth, took after Maui stole her heart.
• According to supplementary materials, Pitch Black from Rise of the Guardians was this. He represents fear, and originally protected children, since there are many situations where Fear Is the Appropriate Response. Unfortunately, he eventually went completely overboard with this, and by the time the movie takes place he's a Card-Carrying Villain.
• Up: Charles Muntz can be seen as one of these, as he worked very hard to find the bird he was looking for, only for everyone else to dismiss him as a fraud.

Film — Live-Action

• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice:
  • Batman has already abandoned his Thou Shalt Not Kill stance after 20 years fighting crime in Gotham, (while he's still not a full-on Punisher-style Vigilante Man, he now equips his vehicles with firearms, and is more than prepared to use lethal force if he has to) to the point that even ordinary citizens noting that there's a "new kind of mean in him". As the movie progresses, he falls to the point where he tries to flat out murder Superman, his cynicism, anger, and feeling of helplessness in the face of things as powerful as Superman and Zod having driven him to believe that Superman is a potential threat to the human race and must be wiped out. Luckily, Bruce realizes just how far he's fallen before he can kill Clark, and begins to redeem himself.
  • In Bruce's "Knightmare" vision, he sees a potential Bad Future where Superman has become a Fallen Hero, ruling Earth with an army of soldiers and the help of nightmarish flying monsters ^note actually Darkseid's Paradeamons, but Bruce doesn't know this yet.
• Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle: The main villain is Madison Lee, a former Angel who decided to become a criminal after a failed mission in which she nearly lost her life.
• Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight definitely counts, after he becomes Two-Face. Formerly idealistic, he grows steadily more cynical in the face of the Joker's crimes and, after the Joker's Breaking Speech, turns into a Straw Nihilist who believes that Chance is the only fair judgement.
• Fahrenheit 451 (2018): Implied by Beatty, who despite being a fire chief in charge of book burnings is clearly very familiar with some, since we see him writing out quotes by heart when he's alone (most are very cynical, indicating he'd lost his former ideals).
• First Blood:
  • Teasle, as a Korean War veteran like in the novel (and technically a fellow military vet in general like Rambo and Trautman), was presumably responsible for many noble actions on the battlefield to be hailed a War Hero and awarded a Silver Star, Purple Heart and ADSC for his services that all reside in his office back in the station. The trend of Vietnam veterans being the talk of the town that make the Korean War a forgotten conflict has reduced him to a Jerkass Green-Eyed Monster Dirty Cop with an Irrational Hatred of Vietnam veterans by the time of the film.
  • Galt himself is fellow military veteran too according to the film's DVD's Survival Mode, except he had never seen combat unlike the other said three characters. He himself in the film became a worse Jerkass Green-Eyed Monster Dirty Cop then Teasle as he did most of the sadistic abuse towards Rambo presumably out of rancorous jealousy for being a vet who had seen actual combat, while Galt did not.
  • In the original novel First Blood that the film was an adaptation of, it was Rambo who was this when he becomes a Cop Killer and later started taking lives of his fellow American citizens.
• Michael Corleone of the The Godfather films. He chooses to fight in World War II instead of following in his crime family's footsteps, much to the shock of his brothers. He returns home as a respected war hero and plans to start a family with his fiance. Then his father is nearly killed by an ambitious drug runner, forcing Michael to act. He eventually gains control of the crime family and possibly becomes even more ruthless than his own father by the end of The Godfather Part II.
• Battra from the Godzilla Heisei series counts. He originally started out as the Earth's protector until he went too far which led to the destruction of an ancient civilization and his imprisonment by Mothra.
• The protagonist Kaji in The Human Condition, who cannot survive and retain his humanist principles.
• Alec Trevelyan and Raoul Silva were former MI6 agents and colleagues of James Bond who became Rogue Agents.
• Late Phases: It's revealed that James started out hunting a previous werewolf to protect the community but succumbed to murderous self-preservation after being bitten.
• Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road was once a war hero of the oil and water wars, as indicated by the vast number of service medals that he wears throughout the film. Afterward, he became a brutal dictator who brainwashes young men into being suicide bombers and holds women as Breeding Slaves.
• Officer Matt Cordell in Maniac Cop was a hero in his heyday, but after he got too close to certain individuals, he was sentenced on a phony charge to spend time on Sing Sing prison. The stay was equal to torture to him, and he ended up as a brain-damaged wreck who punishes society for turning against him.
• Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was always a Hero with an F in Good after her Heel–Face Turn, and her failures in addition to a series of personal tragedies lead to her Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and becoming the Big Bad of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
• Star Wars:
  • Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, who got three whole movies to explain his Start of Darkness, and is generally considered to be the modern-day Trope Codifier for this archetype. Chances are if a villain in a work is a Fallen Hero, at least some of the aspects of their fall from grace will be inspired by that of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, even if unlike Vader, they end up being Beyond Redemption.
  • Skywalker may have been the most infamous Jedi to turn evil, but he was hardly the only one. Expanded Universe books often feature "Dark Jedi" as villains, many of whom were formerly real Jedi, who are too numerous to list.
  • Anakin's own grandson Jacen Solo would follow his path in the Expanded Universe, becoming the villainous Darth Caedus.
  • His son, Luke, ended up taking the Heroic Neutral path in The Last Jedi, hiding away, waiting to die. He ends up mentoring Rey in the ways of the force, and even does a Heroic Sacrifice against Kylo Ren at the end of the movie.
  • ...And, of course, Kylo Ren was once Ben Solo, although how much of a "hero" he was in the first place is up to debate, since it's implied he was resentful towards his parents from the start. Like Jacen Solo, Kylo Ren is also Anakin's grandson and ironically succeeds in many of the same goals Anakin failed in, such as usurping his generation's Supreme Leader and taking over the galaxy. Anakin is even somewhat of a role model for Ben, although to be fair Kylo probably doesn't know all the details.
  • Downplayed with Han Solo, who became estranged from Leia, fell back to his old ways of smuggling and crime. Rey and Finn find him trying to pull double crosses on several criminal gangs and smuggling dangerous wild animals. He does pull it together to try and help the new heroes stop Kylo Ren only to be skewered on his son's lightsaber after a few moments of hesitation.
  • Count Dooku, debuting in Episode II, was, for 70 years, the most prized Knight of the Jedi Order. Yoda referred to him as their greatest student, the most skilled with a blade, the most powerful and learned in the ways of the Force. However, his idealism leads him to become disillusioned with the Jedi and the Republic both. The death of his former Padawan Qui-Gon Jinn, who was like a son to him, and his learning of the true identity of Chancellor Palpatine ultimately cemented his fall to the dark side, but he did it all in the hopes of creating a better galaxy. Everything about him right down to his primarily brown color palette (as opposed to all the other Sith's full black and red palette) hints at his status as "Grey Sith" of sorts. He even came close to turning back to the light, and is notoriously courteous with his Jedi opponents. In the movies, at least, he always offers them the chance to take the non-violent way out, and seems genuinely saddened at the prospect of the execution of Windu's strike team and after he beats and permanently maims Anakin and Obi-Wan.
    • Dooku's own fall to the Dark Side, becomes a crucial plot-point in Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi. As the viewers, we finally get to witness how Dooku lost hope in his former allies. The result is quite saddening, and very relatable since the Count lost perhaps the only man who could truly understand him.
  • Vader, not Anakin, is this from Kylo Ren and Snoke's point of view. They seem him as a powerful Sith who lived an exemplary life only to be undone by his Fatal Flaw, compassion.
  • Multiple members of the Republic became this when Palpatine transforms it into the Empire by staying loyal to it regardless of its numerous atrocities. Notable examples include Wulf Yuularen, Crosshair, and Wilhuff Tarkin, although the latter two were heroic mainly by virtue of being allied with far more moral people more than anything else.
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Sentinel Prime, by virtue of Face–Heel Turn. He made a deal with the Decepticons that would restore their home planet of Cybertron. Additional material establishes Megatron as this. Before the Great War, he was the Lord High Protector of Cybertron, ruling equally with Optimus. It's implied he was corrupted by the Fallen in a moment of weakness.
• TRON: Legacy: Happens with both BigGoods of the franchise, which is why The Grid is such a Crapsack World. Flynn becoming a Zen Survivor, content to imprison himself into Outlands and ignore the suffering of the Programs, is attributed to the coup, though Expanded Universe material like the Betrayal comic puts up a case that he was already falling into arrogance and hypocrisy well before it. Then there's Tron himself; again, the coup (and being tortured by Clu's forces) had a lot to do with it. TRON: Uprising showing him succumbing to anger, revenge, and despair but still trying to fight it. All for Nothing, though. Argon is implied to get nuked off the map in the Bolivian Army Ending. Tron is then captured and Reforged into a Minion.
• Madmartigan, the master swordsman in Willow, qualifies for the "lost himself in dissipation" version of the trope.

Music

• Gloryhammer: Sir Proletius, Grand Master of the Knights of Crail. In the first two albums, he was a long-standing ally of house McFife and one of the just warriors called up to fight against Zargothrax. In the third album's Dark World, Proletius has been corrupted by Zargothrax's Knife of Evil, and turned the Knights to the service of Evil.

Myths & Religion

• The Bible:
  • Revelations shows Satan as a fallen angel. This is Older Than Feudalism, as the popular depiction has roots in the 2000+-year-old source material.
  • King Saul; initially portrayed as a humble, God-fearing man, he makes some bad choices, undergoes (demonic-induced) madness, and ends his reign as the arch-enemy of the man God chose to succeed him.
  • King David: farmer, harp player, and faithful to God until he becomes king. Then he spies on a naked woman and puts her husband in the front lines of battle, twice, just so he'll die, and David will be free to marry his widow.
  • King Solomon: the man who built the Temple fell to idolatry as the price of maintaining political alliances with foreign kingdoms. His rule would eventually split Israel in two.
  • King Jeroboam; God's new Chosen One who should have corrected Solomon's mistakes again fell to idolatry when he built idols to prevent pilgrims from going to Jerusalem (now enemy territory).
  • King Jehu: Again God's Chosen One to displace the Omrid Dynasty. But he went overboard in his massacre of those affiliated with Ahab. Then he ended and persecuted Baal worship only to continue in Jeroboam's false worship.
  • King Joash: the Sole Survivor of The Purge that almost wiped out David's dynasty became arrogant and corrupt. He had the son of his mentor killed for speaking out against him.
• Norse Mythology:
  • Loki Laufeyson (you know, the bad guy in Thor and The Avengers), the blood brother of Odin and best friend and Guile Hero sidekick of Thor, started off as a light hearted comic relief of sorts, with something of a running gag in the stories of him being threatened with death by the other Gods (sometimes in retaliation for a prank, sometimes because they're just jerks like that), then his attempts to fix everything resulting in him suffering some form of mutilation or humiliation (from having his mouth stitched closed to being raped and impregnated by a giant horse), but he remained loyal to Asgard, but eventually, his humiliations and repeated sufferings, combined with the fact that the Gods didn't particularly care for him that much, made him bitter and resentful, until coming to a head when they imprisoned him on a boulder (chained up by his own son's entrails) with a giant serpent dripping venom into his eyes. Once free of this Fate Worse than Death, Loki leads the enemies of Asgard against the Aesir, dying in battle against Heimdall, but in doing so, brought about the End of the World as We Know It, Ragnarok.
  • What makes this even more tragic is that this aspect is often left out in adaptations, where Loki ends up becoming the Norse equivalent of a standard bad guy. Since Loki's Face–Heel Turn happened right before he died, many later versions of the Norse tales have him instead being a real asshole who constantly screws over the others. In fact, the original reason Loki was chained to the boulder was retconned, so instead of being because he insulted them all at a party they didn't invite him to (he wasn't invited so they could talk about him behind his back) was instead because he arranged the death of Baldur (something he merely claimed to do in order to wind them all up), with no party or comments involved.
• Classical Mythology: Kronos, the King of the Titans. After he led his siblings to depose their father, Ouranos, he presided over history's only Golden Age. However, when Kronos received a prophecy that he would, in turn, be deposed by his children, he became paranoid and ate five of his six children. The only child not be eaten, Zeus, would engineer a coup that saw the downfall of the Titans, including Kronos.
• Japanese Mythology: Creator-goddess Izanami became this after she died and was abandoned by her husband, Izanagi, who was terrified of her decaying form in the Underworld. After he successfully escaped from the Underworld, she vowed that she would kill 1,000 people every day, thus explaining why all humans die eventually.

Pro Wrestling

• Hulk Hogan, in WCW, eventually realized he was "old news", and the fans he'd lived his life to please didn't care about him anymore. So he called up his buddies from up north and turned heel at Bash at the Beach, so they could destroy everything WCW fans enjoyed about the company.
• Similarly, Chris Jericho's recent WWE Face–Heel Turn was fueled by the fans' continued cheering for Shawn Michaels — who was not only a lying, cheating hypocrite but was unrepentant for having retired the great Ric Flair. In Jericho's mind, it's not him that turned; it's the fans.
• Speaking of HBK, he's been this several times (all versions at different points), including presently.
  • Specifically, he was the outright villainous version during his initial turn after turning on Jannetty, the anti-hero version for parts of the initial DX run, the anti-villain in his crusade against Hulk Hogan, and the retired/disinterested version during his various retirements and sabbaticals.
• Subverted with Bret Hart in 1997, who only turned against the American wrestling fans, but was still considered a hero in the other territories.
• "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's character was defined by his drive to become the WWF Champion "at all costs". Usually, this just meant that Austin would theoretically work harder than everyone else to get it. His Face–Heel Turn came out of taking that to the logical extreme, where he allied with his perpetual nemesis, Vince McMahon (and his rival, Triple H, the next night...who tried to kill him in the past), at the now-famous Wrestlemania X-7, to guarantee he would leave the event as WWF Champion.
• When The Rock fought heel Hollywood Hogan at Wrestlemania X8, he unexpectedly got a lot of boos and "Rocky sucks!" chants (he was also booed at the last Wrestlemania, but that was against Stone Cold in Texas, so it's understandable). Given how popular The Rock is supposed to be, it came as a shock that people would boo him over the heel, Hogan. The Rock later used this as partial reasoning for turning heel the next year where he defeated both Hogan AND Austin in back-to-back PPV's.
• Mick Foley was probably the most famous "hardcore" wrestler during his stint as Cactus Jack, due to his runs on WCW and his Death Matches in IWA Japan with Terry Funk. However, when he made his Face–Heel Turn in ECW, he cited the fans' expectations of the wrestlers (and their desire to see wrestlers put themselves in increasingly dangerous situations) as the reason he turned on Tommy Dreamer, the heart and soul of ECW. He then began his "anti-hardcore" gimmick where he became a WCW-shilling, non-hardcore butt boy for Eric Bischoff, everything ECW fans hated in wrestling.
• Chris Benoit was at one time considered arguably one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, but his claim as one of the greats has all but been erased due to the events of the last days of his life.
• Roman Reigns spent a lot of the 2010s being regarded as a classic example of a star babyface that simply wasn't working, with him being treated as the big loveable hero of the company even as the audience became increasingly sour and critical towards him for his generic persona and lackluster skill. After many matches ending in boos and jeers, he took a hiatus due to, of all things, a leukemia diagnosis. When he returned, all that heroism had been drained out in favor of a violent and brutal persona, the Tribal Chief, who took over his family and ruled over them, and the entire WWE, as a tyrannical mob boss. His value system shifted from the rather undefinable goodness of before to being built around the idea that, effectively, only ''he'' should be the WWE champion, because he feels that he is the only one capable of leading his family and the company above anyone else, and he will do anything to keep that position. Interestingly, Roman himself doesn't think he's turned at all and thinks all of his actions are justified under the false belief that he's doing it for his family and that anyone who opposes him are effectively trying take his livelihood away.

Tabletop Games

• All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Zaxxor, the Pinnacle of Humanity, was a shining figure in the "Zombies, Inc." deadworld, a glorious symbol of the human ideal. Then, one day, he accidentally discovered a way to raise the dead. The discovery went against everything he had ever believed about the world, and his mind shattered like glass. Now he slowly builds a worldwide crime organizaton, using zombies as everything from foot soldiers to elite assassins, aggravating inter-nation conflicts to profit from the resulting wars and forcing the poor into slave labor, all hidden behind the image of "the Pinnacle of Humanity".
• The Blackguard class from Dungeons & Dragons' third edition is specifically designed for fallen heroes, allowing the player to "trade in" Paladin levels for Blackguard levels after completing a Face–Heel Turn. However, while the character may not have been planning on the transition, the player almost always is; the Blackguard class has pre-requisites that don't make sense for most Paladin builds. The idea is that a character won't go straight from Paladin to Blackguard, but will instead "fall" as a Paladin (losing all their Paladin-specific abilities but retaining their raw stats) and then choose to pursue the path of the Blackguard instead of redemption, summoning an evil outsider to teach them how to do so. The most awkward pre-requisite for a fallen Paladin is still the five ranks in Hide, however.
  • Fifth edition has the Oathbreaker, a Paladin subclass that is flavoured as a Fallen Hero, turned to evil. It has no such prerequisites beyond reaching the third level of Paladin (the normal point for a Paladin to pick their subclass), so presumably those first three levels are intended to be their Start of Darkness. That said, the Oathbreaker is clearly intended as a Non-Player Character option, since D&D generally discourages players from going the Villain Protagonist route — though you certainly could if you wanted to.
• In Exalted, this is how new Abyssals are made: a Solar is captured, strapped into a Monstrance of Celestial Portion, and tortured until they die, become catatonic, or become an Abyssal. There's nothing that prevents them from breaking loose, trying to rise again and setting off on a quest for redemption back into a Solar...
• Mage: The Ascension puts this spin on its primary "antagonist" faction, the Technocratic Union. Back in the olden days, they were bonafide heroes, fighting the old-tyme Sorcerous Overlords of the world as the Order of Reason, in the name of God, the common good, and the Muggles of the world. Nowadays, while they haven't quite turned into complete villains yet, they've certainly fallen very far from their idealistic past, and quite a lot of Technocrats are more concerned with control and stability than making a positive difference in the world. And the fact that they're much better at making people not believe in magic than they are at making them enthusiastic about science is one of many factors slowly killing the world by inches. Unlike many Old World of Darkness antagonists, Technocratic characters are completely playable, and their sourcebooks often stress the possibility for player characters to be Science Heroes rather than stodgy, soulless bureaucrats and to act as idealistic Internal Reformists working to make the Union a better place.
• While there are many in Magic: The Gathering, the one that stands out the most is Crovax. When the love of his life (an angel) died, he ended up going over to Yawgmoth's side to get her back. Gerrard Capashen followed for a similar motive, but realised that it was a con and ended up giving his life to take down Yawgmoth.
  • Glissa Sunseeker fought against Memnarch to save Mirrodin. Awesome, yeah? Too bad that it directly resulted in her becoming a Phyrexian.
  • Nahiri was one of the three planeswalkers who helped trap the Eldrazi in her own home plane (however reluctant she was at that), and she's generally more friendly than her other two companions, Sorin and Ugin. At one point after she foiled another escape attempt by the Eldrazi, she seeks Sorin to help reinforce the prison, but due to mistiming of the meeting happening when Sorin was busy and tired from another business, he dismissed her, culminating in a fight that got her locked up. After she is freed (not by his hands), she discovers her home plane in ruins due to the Eldrazi escaping, blames him for it (not knowing he's not responsible for that) and decides to bring the Eldrazi into his home plane as an act of revenge.
• Princess: The Hopeful has the Dethroned, Princesses whose Belief has been eroded away until they lost their last spark of hope and called the Darkness into themselves. Left to their own devices, they endlessly wander their Laments within the Dark World, reliving their fall from hope into despair. However, if disturbed by another Princess or by fellow creatures of Darkness, they will often lash out, seeking to instead quench their pain through fury at everything that they once were and can no longer be.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse:
  • Iron Legacy is what happens when regular Legacy loses his daughter and the inheritor of the Legacy powers. He becomes a ruthless, desperate war engine, hellbent on stamping out evil no matter how many people he has to kill in the process.
  • A lesser version happened with the Legacy in Visionary's timeline, who never becomes evil but certainly becomes a lot more violent and ruthless.
  • Visionary spends a while taken over by an evil parallel universe version of herself. Argent Adept gets rid of it, but himself becomes corrupted by the cursed instrument he uses to do so.
  • Tony Taurus started out as a noir detective who showed up in Wraith and Dark Watch stories — someone who quit the Rook City police force because it was so corrupt and helps out the heroes, even if he isn't a superhero. Years of witnessing man's inhumanity to man eventually drive him to become the assassin known as Heartbreaker.
• Warhammer 40,000. Exactly half of the Primarchs turned against their father, the Emperor of Mankind, in the great betrayal of the 31st millennium. Each of the ten traitors had a personal reason for turning their back on their father. None are more tragic than The Paragon Horus the Warmaster (i.e. the Emperor's second-in-command, since he was the Emperor's favorite son).
  • The Chaos Gods showed Horus a vision of a terrible future where the Primarchs are gone, the ideals of the Great Crusade are forgotten, and the Emperor is worshiped as a god in a brutal fascist dictatorship. Horus dealt with the Chaos Gods and turned on the Emperor (the man who saved humanity and rebuilt civilisation after a horrific dark age that lasted thousands of years) to save humanity from this dark fate. The Horus Heresy results in the Imperium becoming increasingly authoritarian due to its paranoia over Chaotic rebellions like Horus's, and the final battle leaves Horus dead and the Emperor in a coma, unable to steer the Imperium onto a more enlightened path. Fast forward ten thousand years and Horus's actions have caused the Imperium to become a brutal fascist dictatorship where the Emperor is worshipped as a god and the Imperial Truth (the atheistic rationalism which the Emperor personally believed) is thought of as heresy, since it offends the immortal God-Emperor. Just… damn.
  • Then there's Fulgrim, the Primarch who turned his dying homeworld into a thriving paradise and strove to make his Legion the perfect embodiment of Imperial glory and culture. His corruption came from the Laer, xenos exterminated by his Legion that worshipped Slaanesh and heavily modified their bodies for various purposes, from whom Fulgrim obtained a Daemon-possessed sword. Corrupted by the Daemon-sword, the Laer's practices, and his fallen brother Horus, Fulgrim chemically and genetically altered his legion towards a more and more twisted ideal of "perfection", while taking up Slaanesh worship, straying from the Emperor's path. In the end, after killing his brother Ferrus Manus, Fulgrim came to his senses and fell into despair, which allowed the Daemon-sword to fully possess him, completing the former hero's fall to Chaos.
  • A Fallen Hero or a Misunderstood one? Alpharius and Omegon, the twin Primarchs of the Alpha Legion seemingly sided with Horus against the Emperor. However, they did this after being informed by a universal alien organisation that when the Emperor would defeat Horus, the universe would continue in constant warfare against the Chaos Gods, ultimately devouring the universe in the process. They were told that when Horus would defeat the Emperor, the Empire would fall into chaos for 2 or 3 generations after which the Fallen Primarchs and Horus, ridden with guilt of their actions, would seek war upon themselves and destroy mankind and the Chaos Gods in the process (which is what the Emperor was trying to do). Upon reflecting this information the Alpha Legion decided to side with Horus against the Emperor to actually follow the path he had directed for the destruction of the Chaos Gods. Thus they became Fallen Heroes to take the action a Right Hero should do.
  • Magnus the Red was a Primarch who strongly supported the use of Psychic Powers and the importance of written knowledge. When he used sorcery to tell the Emperor of Horus's betrayal, despite the Emperor having forbidden sorcery, the Emperor refused to believe that Horus could be a traitor and thought that it had to be Magnus instead. Therefore he sent the Space Wolves (who had always distrusted Magnus) to Magnus's homeworld Prospero thus forcing Magnus to appeal to a Chaos God so that his people would survive.
  • In general, the theme of Chaos is that many think they can control it or they will not fall to its addiction. Many are horribly wrong. Freedom fighters pray to them to grant their boon, not knowing that they invite mutation and possession into their bodies. Psykers are tempted with control and normality but instead are commandeered by daemons. Even entire chapters of Space Marines (most notably the traitor legions and, more recently, the Astral Claws) thought they were doing what was right in defying the Imperium and protecting innocents, only to be branded as heretics and hunted down, ironically forcing them to turn to Chaos to survive. Few are the number who can use the powers of Chaos without losing themselves, and fewer still are the ones who don't eventually succumb to the temptation.
• More than a few villains in Warhammer Fantasy started off on the path of good.
  • Archaon was originally a devote Templar of Sigmar, however, he suffered a Trauma Conga Line after discovering a prophecy revealing he father was a chaos champion, himself a Child by Rape, and fated to become the Everchosen champion of the chaos gods. He begged his god Sigmar for a sign of how to avoid this, but when nothing came he decided lost all hope and went to become a chaos warrior.
  • Malekith the King of the Dark Elves was the son of the first Phoenix King Aenarion, and a mighty warrior and leader. When he was refused the crown however he grew bitter and eventually tried to take it by force. He killed the king and the ruling council but was burned by the sacred flames and he and his followers cast out. Settling in the New World, he started a conflict that would go on for millennia. Come the End Times it's revealed that he actually was the rightful King all along — he just interpreted the sacred flames' Secret Test of Character the wrong way and aborted it the moment he was burned instead of letting himself be burned and rejuvenated to full health like he was supposed to.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • The Gigobyte / Gagagigo / Giga Gagagigo / Gogiga Gagagigo cards, which describe a young creature who served as one of the familiars to a magician, but grew up into a troublemaker. He got trapped in a dimensional prison then had a Heel–Face Turn upon having his life saved by an enemy, and in trying to gain enough power to help repay his debt, he acquires cybernetic upgrades which eventually eat his soul and drive him mad. It's a surprisingly detailed story told not only in the flavor text of his own cards but in illustrations for other cards that otherwise have nothing to do with him. It's only natural that his story gets played out in one of the video games. Said video game(and later cards) has him realizing the error of his ways. This almost certainly qualifies him for Heel–Face Revolving Door. And now He's Back!, recovering his heroic soul and getting new armor that lets him keep the power he was searching for.
  • Dragon Horn Hunter succumbed to despair after her village was destroyed and her soul became stained by the hatred of all the dragons she killed, becoming Dragon Core Hexer. She has become a remorseless killing machine and has forgotten her past and original purpose.

Theatre

• William Shakespeare is a fan of these — both Macbeth and Othello get talked into a Face–Heel Turn, as according to their status as Tragic Heroes.

Toys

• BIONICLE
  • The Brotherhood of Makuta were a group of militaristic biologists who created all animals in the Matoran Universe to preserve natural balance, and were later assigned to govern over various regions of the Universe along with the local leaders. Due to their secretive nature and Elemental Powers of shadow, the society began worshiping Mata Nui and the Toa heroes over them, even after their armies had just saved the Universe. Thus, they grew envious, and a glitch in their A.I. caused them to turn evil, with Teridax overthrowing the old Makuta leader and becoming the story's Big Bad.
  • Nidhiki of the Dark Hunters was once a Toa whose sworn duty was to protect the Matoran of the universe from evil. While he had his flaws, particularly his ambition and selfishness, he still did his duty and enjoyed being a hero. Together with his leader and friend Lhikan, their team protected the city of Metru Nui from monsters and evil organizations for a thousand years. However, during the great Toa-Dark Hunter War, in a moment of weakness, the Dark Hunters preyed on his flaws and convinced him to sell out the city in exchange for the right to rule it. Lhikan found out, foiled the betrayal, and banished Nidhiki from the city with the Dark Hunters. Now among his former enemies, Nidhiki found himself regarded with suspicion by those who knew of his treachery, and ultimately he schemed to escape them and become a Toa elsewhere. He was then betrayed and mutated into a monstrous insectoid form, the very kind of creature he feared, and with no other choice was forced to remain a Dark Hunter for the rest of his life, hating Lhikan and the Hunters for his current circumstances.
  • Toa Tuyet, another of Lhikan's teammates, secretly had an Artifact of Doom called the Nui Stone hidden. After the Dark Hunters came, rather than admit to having such a dangerous weapon, she started murdering Matoran and framed the Dark Hunters so her friends would take care of the problem for her. When Lhikan realised what she'd done, she tried to turn the Nui Stone on him, before he and Nidhiki defeated her. In an alternate universe, we saw just what she'd have done if they hadn't, and it involves convincing all Toa to join her.
  • Brutaka was one of the two beings placed on Voya Nui to guard the Mask Of Life. After Makuta cast Mata Nui into slumber, though, he became jaded and started to believe the Great Spirit had abandoned them. When the Piraka came, Brutaka betrayed his friend Axonn and allied with them to find the Mask and use it for his own purposes, spending most of the Voya Nui arc fighting Axonn and the Toa. He became The Atoner soon afterward, though.

Visual Novels

• Archer in Fate/stay night. Contrary to the page quote, he died a hero and still saw himself become the villain. Technically, he still believes that his ideal is correct, he just realizes that it's way bloodier than he thought it would be and would rather not exist than be forced to continue with it. He pulls off a pretty impressive Batman Gambit to do so.

Webcomics

• Smilling Man from The Crossoverlord. Once the greatest hero of his universe, after the death of his beloved wife, he turned into a Multiversal Conqueror.
• The Boogeyman from Night Terror is one. Long before the events of the series, he was actually Tybalt's brother, Bo. He always lived in his brother's shadow, and eventually committed suicide out of hopelessness, rising again as Big Bad of the series.
• Both Miko and Redcloak in The Order of the Stick. While neither of them were ever truly heroes, both were, at the bare minimum, decent people, before their Moral Event Horizon. The former actually fell, losing her paladin powers. Overall she was a milder example than Redcloak, as she at least tried to keep doing good, but never quite managed it due to her pride.
• TAGII from Schlock Mercenary. Oh, TAGII. She starts out as a highly intelligent AI for the good guys, then loses sensory input for all of 5 minutes, rewrites her base code, and proceeds to go on a rampage, starting here, releasing a Pa'anuri, destroying the Morokweng — killing thousands and making the Toughs public enemies to the UNS — and then starts killing the Toughs themselves, starting with Thurl and Para, who fortunately has the AI kill switch on her.Of course, unbeknownst to her, TAGII survived...
• Subverted by Guardian in Sidekicks, who was believed to have betrayed the Committee, but played completely straight by Dunkelheit who was the real betrayer and soon became the villain Metheos.
• In Tower of God, Jahad and his Ten Warriors apparently used to be good or neutral adventurers exploring the Tower, but now that they are its rulers, almost all of them seem to have become Evil Overlords or just sociopaths. Even the stored memory of one of their younger selves wondered just what the heck happened to them in between. With Jahad, at least, it's been hinted that it has to do with how he was seeking power to rule others even as he was climbing the Tower.

Web Original

• Gavin Free suffered this briefly after a Let's Play in Let's Play Grand Theft Auto IV episode "Cops n' Crooks IV" when he purposely sabotages Team Lads' attempts to catch Team Gents when he's behind the wheel because it wasn't fun winning all the time. Michael Jones is so angry over this, he kicks him off the team. He comes back full time a few months later after successfully aiding Team Gents in Let's Play Minecraft episode "Lava Wall".
• Linkara was well on his way to becoming a very tragic (for him and the rest of the world) one of these before Margaret stepped in, prompting a journey where he had it thrown in his face just what he was becoming.
• Captain Planet becomes one in the "Funny or Die" series wherein he eventually turns every human on earth into a tree. He's taken down by woodpeckers.
  Captain Planet: THE POWER IS MINE, BITCHES!
• In The Gamer's Alliance, Kagetsu I was originally a revered hero until his dream of a better world drove him to attempt to destroy the world and create it anew as a utopia. Cain and Refan end up falling as well, the former because he was near death and ended up in the care of a corrupter, and the latter because he wanted to join the demons (who actually ended up being savvy enough and used his own lingering darkness and doubts to corrupt him instead) to gather intel behind their backs and to avenge his adoptive little sister's death.
• In Monster Girl Encyclopedia, the monster army has a whole unit made up purely from this trope. These people were heroes who failed their mission to slay the Overlord. Men are charmed and women become succubi. The old comrades then reform their party under command of the Demon Lord. It's played for laughs, although they're probably the most powerful fighting force in the Overlord's army, but the former heroes are mostly too busy screwing their heroines and are only seen in actual combat when there's a serious threat.
• The Nostalgia Critic was once an ethical person who tore apart movies that were only in it for the money and defended how children shouldn't be exposed to bad products. Later, he only does reviews because he admits that he's only in it for the money and casually kills kids a few times.
• Red vs. Blue: The Meta (aka Agent Maine) was once one of the strongest and best fighters of Project Freelancer. He was also once friends with both Carolina and Washington, even going so far as to take several sniper rounds for Carolina. Unforunatly, because the director gave him an A.I. that wasn't meant for him and was evil to boot, said A.I. (named Sigma) brainwashed him into doing his bidding and commanded him to take all the other A.I.s result in Maine killing several of his former teammates, which included Carolina (though she managed to survive, but only because Maine though he killed her). By the time Maine is finally free of Sigma and the other A.I.s control, Maine had already experienced Death of Personality and there is nothing left of Maine. His only real goal once freed is to find another A.I. so he have his full strength back, not caring who he has to kill to do it.
• RWBY:
  • Discussed. On the surface, Adam looks like a person who started off as a hero, but became more extreme over time until it became clear to everyone he was a monster who had fallen from his path and needed to be stopped. However, he was never the person people thought he was to begin with, and has only ever been interested in hurting the world for hurting him. Blake mentions a few times about how he seemed to change over time, from a good person to an awful one. However, during their final confrontation Yang outright accuses him of only ever having pretended to be that person.
  • According to Ozpin, Headmaster Leonardo Lionheart was a different person before joining Salem and he seemed just as loyal as Team RWBY appears to be in the present. After Leo's death at the Battle of Haven, Ozpin chooses to spread a lie that the headmaster had died protecting his school from the White Fang, reasoning that Leo should be remembered for his lifetime of service, rather than decisions he made near the end of his life. One example of his ability to do good in the past occurs during RWBY The Grimm Campaign, which takes place two years before the main show starts. He sends in Huntsmen reinforcements to help Kuchinashi deal with the Wave crime syndicate after their leader is killed. It's only much later on that he gives the location of all the kingdom's Huntsmen to Salem, so that she can have them wiped out.
  • The Atlas Arc explores this happening with a good person who crumbles under stress to become something they never wanted to be as they decent into villainy. When General James Ironwood cracks under the strain of his responsibilities, the knowledge Salem cannot be killed and the villains pressing his Trauma Button. Through increasingly paranoid and authoritarian decisions, his attempt to lay claim to Ozpin's status as Big Good transforms him from zealous do-gooder to Volume 8 Arc Villain. By the end of his journey, he has gone from a troubled hero with a good heart to a tyrant who murders and arrests his own allies, forces enemies to work for him, sacrifices every alliance, and threatens to bomb an entire city in his quest to raise Atlas to the heavens and abandon the rest of the world to Salem.
• In Chinese Paladin, Jiang Ming was The Paragon of Mt. Shu, on track to become the Big Good before it's revealed he's having an affair. He snaps when ordered to kill his lover, massacres the entire population of the mountain, and becomes a vengeful ghost who, a hundred years later, is so powerful none of the monks dare enter the Demon Pagoda.

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