Protagonist Journey to Villain

"It took me twenty years to strike it rich because I always played it square! I've decided to adopt new methods now!"

"You were right about me all along, Mr. Kent. I am the villain of this story!"

— Lex Luthor, Smallville

The Protagonist's Journey to Villain is a plot in which the protagonist, who starts out well-intentioned, turns into a monster. In other words, it's the making of the Villain Protagonist. Sometimes this plot can be backstory, perhaps overlapping with Start of Darkness.

For example, Bob, the happy idealist and doer of good, endures a Trauma Conga Line, loses his loved ones and his morals through a series of battles with evil, and becomes just the opposite of what he once was. He is now a cruel, immoral evildoer.

However, note that this descent into evil has to be the focus of the plot or at least a very important plot point. A mere mention that a bad person was once good is not enough for this trope. This trope is about the journey to evil, not the traveler (Bob), nor the destination.

This is the primary arc in many a Tragedy, which usually ends with the death of the hero-turned-villain as its source of audience catharsis.

This is a subtrope of Fallen Hero, in that this is the journey of the Protagonist. Related to Tragic Hero, He Who Fights Monsters, The Paragon Always Rebels, Face–Heel Turn, Became Their Own Antithesis, and Used to Be a Sweet Kid. Compare and contrast Start of Darkness, where a previously established villain's backstory is revealed. Compare Big Bad Slippage, where a character who may or may not be the protagonist becomes the Big Bad over the course of the story, or Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome, where the "journey" happened off-screen between installments and at best might be elaborated upon. Contrast Redemption Quest and Rogue Protagonist, where the main character from a work becomes the villain in the sequel.

SPOILER WARNING! In many cases, the mere fact that this trope applies to a work can be a spoiler. Read at your own risk.

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Example subpages:

• Live-Action TV
• Video Games

Other examples:

Anime and Manga

• Attack on Titan has the entire series focused on Eren Yeager's journey to become the Big Bad of his own series. Eren begins his journey mentally unhinged but antiheroic, then learns to grow up but develops a grudge against all the corruption he finds in society, and when he learns just how far the corruption reaches and how long it has been going on he snaps; he has a well thought out, carefully considered plan that is outright villainous even with its idealistic aims. Though exactly what is going on remains ambiguous. Over the last several months leading up to his attack on Liberio, he was secretly conspiring with Zeke's group and a rogue element within the military itself. Since being brought home, he has refused to explain himself to his old friends and even threatened them with his powers. As Paradis braces for a potential retaliation from the rest of the world for Eren's attack, his actions have also inspired a xenophobic movement that seeks to unseat the current government and restore the old Eldian Empire. With Commander Zackley's assassination coinciding with Eren breaking himself and his followers out of prison, the nation is a powder keg with Eren being set to oppose his former comrades. Finally, Eren manages to reach the mental world of the Titans, speak with the first human to ever be oppressed by them, and gives her free reign to do whatever she wants. Including the choice to destroy the entire world by stomping on everyone with an army of freshly awakened Titans. Which was Eren's plan all along, to kill all non-Paradisians using the above-mentioned Colossal Titans.
• Berserk devotes much of the Golden Age arc to the relationship between Guts and Griffith, and focuses on the factors which would ultimately lead Griffith to betray Guts and become his number one enemy.
• While Black Butler started with Ciel already as a Villain Protagonist, many chapters show him getting progressively worse.
• Black Lagoon: As the series goes on, "outside" character Rock is quickly turning into something else. The opposite is true of Revy, who has actually eased up thanks to Rock's optimism.
• Code Geass chronicles Lelouch Lamperouge and Suzaku Kururugi's descent into villainy, if only to save the world.
• Death Note is this for Light Yagami, though very, very briefly, and is more like a jump than a journey. He starts off just killing dangerous criminals, and initially is seized with fear and guilt over it, but in five day's time he's not only completely gotten over it, but has written more names in the notebook than Ryuk has ever seen one human do. It's only a few chapters/episodes before he claims that since his intentions are noble, and the police are trying to stop him, it's perfectly acceptable to murder them as well; to top that off, at this point he's already dripping with gleeful smugness every time he outsmarts a bunch of honest cops, or in one case, the widow of an honest cop he murdered. And from there, things go From Bad to Worse.
• This is played with in Destiny of the Shrine Maiden. Chikane, being rather attracted to Himeko who already seems interested in someone else, begins to go a tad conflicted. This reaches a head when one of the Orochi Heads uses her desires for Himeko to try and kill her in a scene that remains one of the most well known...for reasons. As a result, Chikane has her way with Himeko, steals Ogami's Orochi mech, kills the other Orochi Heads and awakens Orochi herself. Where the 'played with' part comes up is that Chikane never became evil, she was doing a Batman Gambit to get Himeko to kill her for the world rebirth ritual to be complete and in order to push her far enough to summon a god by herself since a memory of her old self implanted a hatred for said god in the back of her mind. Ultimately, Chikane saved everyone at the cost of her own happiness, but the ending in both the manga and anime suggest that she was given what she wanted in all of her lives but never got.
• Haruko from FLCL and its sequels, particularly if you believe that Alternative is a Stealth Prequel. In that series she's friendly and, aside from some Memetic Molester behavior, doesn't really do anything villainous. FLCL has her ambiguous for most of the season before turning her into the Big Bad, while Progressive has her at her most antagonistic.
• Prequel anime Ga-Rei -Zero- is mostly about Yomi's Start of Darkness and how she became the first Big Bad of Ga-Rei.
• Shinn Asuka of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny starts out as a standard Jerk with a Heart of Gold. As the series progresses, his anger issues begin to consume him entirely and he becomes The Berserker, and eventually an antivillainous Brute following The Reveal that his boss has been Big Bad all along. He gets over it after his defeat. Arguably it's a good thing he progressed in this way because he unknowingly worked for the Big Bad all along and when consumed with anger he becomes a much less effective fighter and ended up being defeated relatively easily by his former mentor Athrun despite previously establishing himself as the superior pilot of the two.
• A good half of the plot of Naruto focuses on the slow decline of Sasuke from angsty-but-loyal to full-on villainy and the titular character's (mostly unsuccessful) attempts to stop this.
  • The slow descent ended the instant Tobi got his claws into Sasuke. With a bit of egging on by the master manipulator, Sasuke dives headlong off the slope; even his teammates who had suffered under Orochimaru were stunned by his sudden swerve into open murder.
  • Tobi would know all about this trope, with his being Obito and all. He knew exactly how to move Sasuke along that path, because Madara did the same thing to him.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: It appears at some point that this may be the fate of poor Negi Springfield, who starts the series as a Stepford Smiler brought on by a Dark and Troubled Past. As he and his students become involved in magic and the magical world, he begins to put his students in trouble and he blames himself for everything. In the Magic World arc, things get worse and he learns Black Magic. Now struggling with The Corruption and the danger of becoming an inhuman demon, it's only his True Companions preventing the jump off the slippery slope while his enemies and his master want to push him over the edge. Though whilst his master would rather he was evil, they don't want him mindless. Unlike the enemies.
  • Subverted. In the end, while Negi has become something more than human, maybe even of a demonic nature, he is still just as heroic and idealistic as he was beforehand. It was merely a test of The Hero's Journey.
  • In the Stealth Sequel that takes place in an alternate timeline, UQ Holder!, however, this is double subverted as Negi fails to defeat the Big Bad in the final battle and instead falls under the control of The Lifemaker, fusing with her in a similar manner to Yuuji Sakai from Shakugan no Shana. Then in the finale it becomes subverted once again, as Touta manages to find a way to bring Negi back to his senses and fight on the heroes side. However at the same time, the Lifemaker then reveals that she also has control of previous Living Legend and former hero Nagi Springfield as a backup upon losing Negi.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica episodes 3-8 count as one for Sayaka Miki, of all people, as she goes from wannabe hero of justice to heartbroken warrior, then to more extremist warrior, and finally becomes a witch.
  • As of the movie Rebellion, the entire series retroactively becomes one of these for Homura Akemi, who becomes a Satanic Archetype and traps everyone in a Lotus-Eater Machine so that they can finally have a chance to live a normal, happy life.
• Ringing Bell has this happen to Chirin. A cute little lamb grows up and turns into a murdering demonic ram.
• The Rose of Versailles has a downplayed case with Marie Antoinette; even at her worst Marie's personal virtues shine through, but her arc still has elements of this. Her precocious infatuation with all things gaudy and glittering spin an innocent princess into a rigid queen who is utterly unwilling to compromise her life of power and luxury, and her refusal to elevate the people at any expense to the royal family is a major contributing factor to the revolution's bloody turn. With Louis XVI's dithering, the story splits responsibility for the violence between Antoinette and Robespierre; Robespierre might have been an opportunist, but Antoinette's adherence to a system built to facilitate decadence and excess gave him his opportunity. In the end, even Oscar sides against her.
• The infamous martial arts manga Shamo is about a boy who kills his parents, goes to prison, gets raped, and then carries on to become the most psychopathic martial artist ever conceived.
• Initially in Sun-Ken Rock, Ken is okay with having a small gang that can pass up as posers thinking way too big, but as things go Ken's influence actually creates a parallel state. He becomes a big shot, a true criminal in real life standards by owning corrupt casinos, idol agencies and real estate companies. That's where Ken starts doubting himself, being rather careless about rivals trying to destroy or seize his empire, as he thinks it could be for the best.
• The first half of the third season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is this for protagonist Judai. He doesn't remain a villain for long but comes out of the situation an almost completely different character.

Card Games

• In the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game this happens to Gagagigo who started his career as the little and cute Gigobyte and fights along with Eria the Water Charmer. As the grown-up Gagagigo he eventually left her and someday he fought Freed the Brave Wanderer, ended up being trapped in another dimension. He met Marauding Captain and fought against Inpachi, who later appeared again as Blazing Inpachi; the Marauding Captain took the bullet, which inspired Gagagigo to do the same for one of the Captain's men during the war against Invader of Darkness. Later, hoping to defeat Invader of Darkness, he asked the Mad Scientist Kozaky to make him stronger, and Kozaky rebuilt his body and turned him into the corrupted Giga Gagagigo. When he fought against Freed the Brave Wanderer again in his native dimension, he got his own attack reflected and lost. Obsessed with gaining strength to defeat his rivals, he continued his rampage and eventually transformed into Gogiga Gagagigo and truly lost his soul.
  • The following story (which is "written" many years after his transformation) inverts his dark development as he fought Freed the Brave Wanderer again, finally overpowering him, but Marauding Captain appeared and protected him before Gogiga Gagagigo delivered the finishing blow. Instead of following his corrupted instincts, Gogiga Gagagigo understands Marauding Captain's actions and forsakes his quest for power. Thus, he finally becomes the strong warrior of justice he once sought out to be, Gagagigo the Risen.

Comic Books

• Arawn: The entire comic is about Arawn relating his life story to explain how he went from an ordinary human to the demonic Evil Overlord of the underworld.
• The Batman Vampire trilogy basically looks at Batman's descent from hero to anti-villain as he battles Dracula and his vampire minions while becoming a vampire himself. In Red Rain, his only victims are feral vampires who are no longer human before he confronts and kills Dracula himself, while in Bloodstorm the vampires he kills are still reasonably human in appearance but Batman nevertheless kills them all once sure that they will go on to kill and feed if he doesn't stop them. He considers himself to have crossed a line when he kills the Joker- his first human victim- and drinks his blood in a moment of blind rage, but after spending time immobilised in his coffin (staking alone just paralyses vampires in this continuity), he suffers a serious Sanity Slippage. When Alfred removes the stake in Crimson Mist, Batman has regressed to a feral Anti-Villain state, the Dark Knight killing basically all of his traditional rogue's gallery. He is only prevented from being an outright villain because everyone he kills was unquestionably a killer themselves, but he's aware that his appetite will drive him to prey on innocents once all deserving prey in Gotham has been eliminated.
• Green Lantern: Hal Jordan's descent into madness after the destruction of Coast City, which eventually led to him taking the name Parallax and annihilating the rest of the Green Lantern Corps in order to claim the powers of Oa for himself, was one of the largest and best-realized examples of this trope. Then Parallax was retconned into a quasi-demonic spirit of fear...
• Irredeemable is about a Superman Substitute called the Plutonian who suffers a complete mental breakdown and flips from hero to villain in a superpower-assisted spree killing. Part of the book involves looking at how he got to that point. Some of his former teammates seem to have started down that same path while trying to stop him...
• The entire The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck series captures Scrooge's development through life, how his experiences and hardships shaped him from optimistic youth to the money-hungry villain he was in his debut and his eventual redemption. If you pay particular attention to the portraits of the main albums, he gets progressively meaner with each portrait until he ends up a broken old man.
• Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith is about how Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma turn to The Dark Side. It's a much shorter trip for Kun, who had serious anger issues and a bit of Fantastic Racism all along. Qel-Droma, on the other hand, is first subjected to The Corruption while trying to infiltrate a Sith cult, then ends up killing his own brother and becoming The Dragon to Kun.
• The "Barren Earth" backup feature in Warlord is effectively this for Jinal Ne'Comarr, who starts out just wanting to defend earth from the Qlov. By the time that "Barren Earth" became an independent miniseries, Conqueror of the Barren Earth, Jinal is determined to conquer the world by force. Interestingly, Jinal is the hero of the story.
• Warrior Cats: The Rise of Scourge is about how a cute little kitten named Tiny became Scourge, ruler of BloodClan and Evil Counterpart to The Hero Firestar.
• Watchmen has this as a subplot for Veidt.
• Winter Soldier: The Bitter March has Ran Shen, already unsure of the morality of Cold War era S.H.I.E.L.D., finally be tipped over the edge by Nick Fury shooting one dog too many and ruining the Winter Soldier's attempted Heel–Face Turn.

Fan Works

Crossovers

• Amenaza: Naruto's fall into darkness after becoming a Hollow is extensively detailed, as he turns against his former friends and aims to make them suffer.
• Child of the Storm occasionally notes how both Magneto and Loki went down this path and managed to turn away. It also hints that, unless he's careful, Harry could potentially follow the same path and become something far worse than Magneto ever was. It's not a likely possibility, but it's there.
  • It becomes significantly more likely after his encounter with the Red Room, transformation into the Red Son, and then willing transformation into the Dark Phoenix.
• Future After Failed Realms: Downplayed in the case of Maribel Hearn, whom is confirmed to eventually become Yukari Yakumo. While certainly not a heroic figure, Yukari isn't entirely without redeeming qualities.
• Kamen Rider Witch Alternative: The Ballad of Oscura

Alex Rider

• The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Zig-Zagged — Alex appears to be sliding this way at times, but doesn't entirely lose his grasp on his beliefs.
• Of Madness and Mammals: Inverted; despite teaming up with Yassen, and accidentally committing murder under the influence, Alex remains a largely moral and caring young man who influences Yassen to gradually become a little less amoral and start reducing the collateral damage he causes.

Code Geass

• In Code Geass: Mao of the Deliverance, Mao's frustration, growing insanity, and desperation twist him into a much more manipulative and brutal person. Later chapters, however, appear to hint at a moral recovery.

Death Note

• In Fade, L turns progressively worse after he gets his hands on a Death Note, containing a part of the story of Kira's rise to power.

Disney Animated Canon

• Bloodlines follows Lucy Sang, who suffers a Miscarriage of Justice when she's falsely accused — and jailed — of her brother's murder. Already the Black Sheep of her family, she travels down the path of becoming a truly fearsome, sadistic villainess.
• Happens to Simba in The Lion King Adventures. Starting with the deaths of Mufasa and Sarabi in The Master Plan, Simba changes throughout Series Five from a hero into a fearsome killer. It turns out in The End that the Writer was manipulating everything around him in order to make him evil. However, upon realizing this, Simba changes his ways, eventually killing the Writer and saving the entire universe. He goes back to normal from then on.

Doctor Who

• This quite amazing fanvid about the Tenth Doctor. The scariest part is that the song (which is also an example of this trope) actually does fit his canon personality to a T.

Dragon Ball

• Team Four Star's playthrough of Dragon Ball Xenoverse shows the adventures of their character Dumplin before he becomes their universe's version of Mr. Popo.

Final Fantasy

• Throughout The Fifth Act, Cloud grows increasingly embittered and frustrated, blinded by his hatred of Sephiroth and desperate to make more progress towards his goals. Then he's tortured and experimented upon, learning in the process that President Shinra is his father. All of this leads to him getting possessed by Jenova.

Harry Potter

• The Darkness Series: Harry Potter and the Descent Into Darkness. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Harry is embittered by the abandonment of his friends following the fiasco with the Goblet of Fire and allows the horcrux access to his mind. He finds comfort in his new imaginary friend who guides him to Salazar Slytherin's Library in the Chamber of Secrets for guidance on how to survive the tournament.
• Tristan Winter (formerly known as Harry Potter) in the The Jaded Eyes Series begins his journey into villainy when he's six years old.

Kung Fu Panda

• The Vow has the Start of Darkness of Lord Shen included for the first part of the story.

Let Me In

• A Cold Winter's Night portrays the continuation of Owen's journey from where the film left off, although in anachronistic order.

Miraculous Ladybug

• Played With in The Karma of Lies. Adrien believes that simply being chosen to become Chat Noir grants him Protagonist-Centered Morality; as he repeatedly reassures Plagg, he's going to get his happy ending regardless of what he does or doesn't do. With this in mind, he solely looks out for his own interests. But his decisions come back to haunt him, as the public comes to see him as a Nominal Hero at best — especially after he skips out on the Final Battle with Hawkmoth, then crashes an interview and accidentally reveals his Skewed Priorities. When Mayura launches her final assault, he tries to redeem himself purely to 'get what he's due', only to accidentally cement himself as a villain in the eyes of the public when Mayura stealing his Ring is mistaken for him willingly handing it over. Ultimately, Adrien's selfishness and sense of entitlement is responsible for his own downfall, though he insists to the end that he's not responsible for anything that went wrong.
  • Adrien's perspective through the work also makes clear that while he considers himself morally superior to others for 'taking the high road' and not doing anything about Lila conning his classmates, he's far more willing to act once he's personally impacted by her tricks... and when she isn't immediately brought to justice, starts plotting to take it into his own hands.

Mob Psycho 100

• A Breach of Trust: Ritsu's search for his missing brother leads him into increasingly darker territory, as he becomes a Willing Channeler for Gimcrack and other spirits for the sake of becoming more powerful, among many other questionable decisions.

My Hero Academia

• AfO's Guide To A Peaceful Retirement: In the past, Hisashi was trying to fight the corruption and cruelty of his own time by gaining power and control, only to be driven to increasingly extreme ends and eventually full-fledged villainy. In the present, he's attempting to invert this; having a family motivates him to rediscover his capacity for empathy and ensure a better life for them all.
• Cain: While Katsuki was already a Big Jerk on Campus, once he accidentally discovers that his favorite punching bag has been chosen by All Might to become his secret successor, his Barbaric Bullying escalates even further, to the point where he's stalking and terrorizing Izuku, trying to break into his home, and even an outright murder attempt. All while telling himself that everything he's doing is "heroic".

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• How I Lost My Mother details Cozy Glow's Start of Darkness, after she's betrayed and Un-Personed by her own mother, who refuses to acknowledge and face her mistakes even after realizing she may have triggered a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
• Path Of The Tyrant follows Majesty on the descent that ultimately results in her becoming the Black Star in Ragnarock.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

• Catarina Claes MUST DIE!: A deeply damaged social outcast is reborn into the role of Henrietta Garland, whom she recognizes as a minor character from her favorite game, "Fortune Lover". Said girl enjoyed the invoked Catharsis Factor of Catarina Claes' Doom Endings, and grows increasingly obsessed with ensuring this Catarina meets a gruesome fate, despite all evidence that the girl she's dealing with is completely different from the one she recalls from the games. This obsession stems so far that she considers the suffering of others Worth It so long as she gets what she wants.

Naruto

• Yet again, with a little extra help: Averted by Sasuke; his journey down this path comes to a screeching end during the Land of Waves arc, and he starts backpedaling furiously. By the time of the Chuunin Exams, he's effectively sprinting in the opposite direction. After getting answers from Sarutobi regarding what Itachi told him, he ends up practically at war with Madara for what they've done.

The Powerpuff Girls

• Villain: Redux follows the gradual decline of Buttercup as she becomes increasingly disillusioned with her life as a hero, due to a variety of factors. Such as getting badly scarred in an incident on Monster Island due to Blossom betraying her, with the truth getting covered up and the public fed a cover story about what happened. Her scars make the citizens of Townsville increasingly wary of her, isolating her further and further.

The Rising of the Shield Hero

• Chronicles Of The Wayward Tome Hero: Nan starts out as an Anti-Villain with good intentions. However, as the mental and physical scars start piling up, he grows increasingly cynical and unstable, ultimately becoming a Humanoid Abomination intent on destroying all life.

RWBY

• Blackened Bluebird and Holding the World On Their Shoulders both depict this in regards to their main character, May Marigold, but go about it ever so differently. In both, she's a huntress in training who has seen the abusive and oppressive society of Atlas firsthand and wants to do something about it. Unfortunately, this makes her an easy target for Salem, who isolates her from her friends and manipulates her into a willing agent for her eternal vendetta against Ozpin. Holding the World frames this as the story of a Fallen Hero, a tragedy of a good person being corrupted into a monster who still clings on to her humanity. Blackened Bluebird, on the other hand, frames it as the triumphant rise of a villain, a story that is certainly tragic when you take a step back, but in the moment feels like a Villain Protagonist's rise to power.
• The Makings of Team CRME: Cinder's character arc in this series is basically the story of how she became the monster she is in the show. She goes from pitiable abused little girl to vengeful young woman, from that to manipulative power-seeker, and from that to full-blown megalomaniac. Her fall is not a pretty one.

Star Fox

• SyxxFox's Rogue Fox: Armageddon Soul series has the beloved titular character Fox falls into alarming depths of deep depression that manipulates his broken-heart into bitter resentment at the abandonment of his friends and the refusal of accepting his apology from Krystal after the Anglar Blitz. The result? He fakes his death and commits a crime that sends him to a clandestine government's operation called Slaying Silence aka Project Slayer, a military plan intent on creating supersoldiers out of the hardened-souls of lowlifes and thugs as a countermeasure for Corneria's safety. Ironically, the time he spent there only darkens his heart before he eventually loses it once he is sent on assassination missions, becoming cruel and cold-hearted. It worsens when Krystal crosses his path again as "Kursed" (which happens in one of Command's endings) and the clash results in him becoming more sadistic and vengeful (and hateful towards Krystal) as he eventually becomes an illegalist after defecting with his newfound lover and team. The next story "Spare Your Soul" is even darker because he literally obliterates Corneria in an act of vengeance soon afterward. And though he is defeated in the sequel, it is heavily implied by both the readers and author himself, that he will return seeking revenge once his forced servitude to repay the souls he took in his path of destruction ends, starting with Krystal and eventually his father.

Warhammer 40,000

• Be All My Sins: Nathalie goes through an accelerated version where, as is often repeated, the corruption train has no brakes.

Films — Animation

• In the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls spin-off universe of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Sunset Shimmer's pictures of herself as Princess of the Fall Formal show her progressing from "genuine and innocent" to "condescending and entitled" to "outright power-hungry".

Films — Live-Action

• Andrew Detmer from Chronicle, although in his case it'd be more of him not willing to be a whipping boy to those who have constantly abused him. He starts the movie with an abusive father and a terminally ill mother, then he gains telekinetic powers through an alien device. Andrew becomes something of a Social Darwinist and uses increasingly destructive means to lash out against his bullies and provide for his mother until he finally snaps and becomes an insane Omnicidal Maniac who lays waste to Seattle.
• Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane goes from being a muckraking journalist to a megalomaniacal narcissist who's only interested in running his newspaper empire.
• Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. As he says himself, a hero could end up living long enough to see himself becoming a villain, foreshadows his own future and he ends up having this as his character theme, with crucial mistakes, tragedy and the Joker's manipulations ultimately leading to him becoming Two-Face.
• Assumed within the plot of Dracula Untold, with Vlad III calling himself Son of the Dragon, and eventually calling himself Son of the Devil by the end. However, it's also a Subverted Trope, as he gains a lot of humanity over the course of the film, to the point of seeing his past massacres as the Impaler as disturbing, and killing his entire vampire army so as to protect his son.
• Emily the Criminal: Emily starts as a law-abiding person suffering the consequences of prior bad decisions. By the end of the movie she is a serious felon and appears much darker morally.
• The Spaghetti Western Faccia A Faccia has a mild-mannered Boston professor turn into a ruthless criminal over the course of the film.
• Falling Down: An interesting version where not only does the protagonist Bill Foster aka D-Fens become "the bad guy", but the roles are also reversed with his Hero Antagonist Detective Prendergast, who initially seems like a forgettable side character. Foster starts the film by lashing out at the societal annoyances he sees around him, but his actions become increasingly bolder as he takes an entire restaurant hostage to complain about the bad food, blows up a construction site, and causes several deaths. By the time that Foster and Prendergast come face to face and Foster realizes that he's the bad guy in all this and the Decoy Protagonist, it comes as a shock to the audience who were identifying with Bill up until then.
• Arguably the case for Abigail in The Favourite, as she starts out a kind-natured Fallen Princess, who was previously a Lady before her father gambled away all the family fortune, including Abigail herself, so she sets out to join her cousin Sarah at Queen Anne's court in hopes of getting it back. However, as she is sucked into the world of politics and is abused consistently by the staff, Sarah and the Duke, Abigail adapts to their cruel, underhanded ways alarmingly quickly, going from playing nice around Queen Anne as an antidote to Sarah's personality, faking tears when people push her too far, drugging Sarah's tea, seducing a Lord, marrying him and then all but dumping him once she gets her title back. Her cruelty finally culminates in getting Sarah officially banished from Court and intercepting her letters to the Queen, leaving Anne heartbroken, blatantly cheating on her husband in front of him, and finally stomping on one of Queen Anne's beloved pet bunnies (whom she views as surrogate children) until she nearly kills it. Queen Anne is not amused.
• Seth Brundle in The Fly (1986) starts as a sweet, brilliant scientist... then, in the midst of a drunken bender in the wake of a romantic misunderstanding, he makes a Tragic Mistake with his teleportation project and ends up unknowingly merged with a housefly on the molecular-genetic level. The resultant mutation is a Slow Transformation from the inside-out that not only turns him into a walking Body Horror but slowly erodes his human morals and reason. Realizing that he's becoming "an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it", he turns his still-devoted lover Veronica away because he knows he will hurt her at some point if he doesn't. Alas, it's only afterward that he learns she's pregnant with his child, and between this and his desperate hopes to retain some of his humanity he kidnaps her before she can have an abortion, gruesomely maims the ex-lover who comes to rescue her with corrosive vomit, and then tries to forcibly merge himself with her and their unborn child, during which his final One-Winged Angel transformation takes place and he becomes a monster in every possible sense. His plan fails and renders him a Clipped-Wing Angel, and Veronica ends up killing him at his voiceless request. (One reason the film was financed by a production company rather than by 20th Century Fox directly was because executives weren't sure this trope would appeal to audiences of The '80s.)
• Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning not only ended with "Jason Voorhees" revealed to be a copycat killer, it also implied that Tommy Jarvis, the protagonist of both this film and the previous one, had been left so traumatized by his ordeal that he had snapped and become a killer himself. It culminates in a Bolivian Army Ending where he sneaks up on the Final Girl Pam with a knife while wearing a familiar hockey mask. The negative fan reception to this film, however, caused the filmmakers to drop that story in the next film, Jason Lives, which revealed the ending of A New Beginning to be a hallucination.
• Joker in Full Metal Jacket is a reluctant infantryman who questions whether or not it is natural for man to kill. After killing a Vietnamese sniper who singlehandedly killed most of his platoon, he is gleefully singing with his platoon ready to kill some more.
• The protagonist in Gate of Hell is a noble, brave samurai. He falls in love with a lady-in-waiting at the emperor's court and asks for her hand, only to find out she's already married. He doesn't take "no" for an answer, and by the end, he is a homicidal villain.
• The Godfather trilogy is all about Michael Corleone's transformation from White Sheep of a crime family to its ruthless leader, and subsequent doomed attempts to atone. Initially, he's not supposed to be involved in the family business at all, as his father genuinely wants someone in the next generation to leave their criminal past behind, but Michael is drawn in in order to protect him from assassination and ends up being the only real candidate to succeed him. He starts out promising his wife that he too intends to make the family legitimate, and his justification for everything is that he's protecting his family. But it turns out he thinks the best way to do that is by consolidating his power and taking out all his enemies in one fell swoop, who happen to include his brother-in-law. The second movie takes the paradox further — now the enemies he's wiping out are a terminally ill man who's no threat to him anyway and, famously, his own brother, and in the meantime his coldness and the violence that surrounds him have driven his wife and children away. The third film has him as a tragic figure realizing that he can't undo what he's done and that the future of the family is out of his hands, and eventually receiving the ultimate poetic punishment: seeing his daughter killed by a bullet meant for him.
  • The subplot for Part II is a flashback detailing how Michael's father Vito started out as a poor immigrant orphan, turning to crime after being fired to feed his family, and rose to become one of the most powerful Dons in the nation.
• The Hand showcases Jon's dark descent from cartoonist and family man into madness, violence and perhaps murder (depending on whether you believe the Evil Hand actually exists or is just a product of Jon's delusion).
• The entire scope of The Human Condition is this, which sees Kaji go from an idealistic hero to a cynical demoralized drifter.
• Joker (2019) details a version of The Joker's, starting from a man who suffers from mental illness and is ostracized by society and going through his path to becoming Batman's archenemy.
• If you consider her a villain rather than a feminist icon, Valerie Solanas in I Shot Andy Warhol.
• I Shot Jesse James features an odd example, as it's a villain becoming good before going bad again. Robert Ford starts out as just another outlaw, who then tries to go straight and get married. However, frontier society repeatedly shuns and shames him for killing Jesse James, eventually leading to his final bout of madness when his girlfriend decides to leave him.
• Leatherface is the story of how the innocent young boy Jedidiah becomes the childish, brutish murderer Leatherface.
• Let Me In has a very tragic example with the main character Owen, who starts the story off as meek boy being horribly abused by bullies at school, neglected at home, deeply lonely and showing signs of snapping from his situation. And that's before he meets the vampire, Abby. By the end of the film he's run away with her, accepting her vampiric nature completely and regardless of whether she turns him into a vampire as well, or just uses him as her caretaker, he'll be living a violent life until he dies.
• Mean Girls is a comedic take on this, exploring how a seemingly normal, sweet, and kind teenage girl like Cady Heron can transform into an Alpha Bitch without even realizing it. Her quest for revenge against Regina George winds up dragging her down to Regina's level as she employs the same underhanded tactics that Regina did to ruin the lives of countless girls who crossed her, eventually culminating in a "The Reason You Suck" Speech from her friend Janis who realized what Cady had become. The third act is about Cady's Heel Realization driving her to claw her way back from her villainy and become the protagonist again.
• Thana from Ms. 45 begins the film as a sympathetic rape victim, but her breakdown and hatred causes her to evolve from an accidental killer, to vigilante, to serial killer and finally a mass shooter.
• My Best Friend's Wedding is a rom-com variation of this, although the film is clever enough to hide it under the usual Julia Roberts tropes for the first half of the film.
• Pirates of Silicon Valley focuses a lot on Steve Jobs' transformation from a counter-culture child of The '60s to a hard-driving Bad Boss who's consumed by his ambition and drives away his friends. He gets better.
• The Queen of Black Magic: Over the course of the film, Murni goes from innocent woman to lynching victim to vengeful sorceress to trying to slaughter the entire village before finally sacrificing herself to achieve redemption.
• The Ruling Class is a very peculiar case as the main character, Jack Gurney is from start to finish completely insane. He starts however with the harmless delusion of being Jesus Christ and a loving God who wishes goodwill to everyone. Then they give him a rather nasty breaking speech that completely shatters his emotional world and the keystones of his world view. He crosses the Despair Event Horizon and almost becomes an empty husk of a man. But then his willpower facilitates another identity from zero, in accordance with his new grim understanding of the world. And thus Jack aka Jack the Ripper was born. He was cured alright...
• It was originally assumed that this would be the plot of The Scorpion King, as the prequel to The Mummy Returns, but the film ends with Mathias still the hero. The only indication that he'll eventually become a villain is a single reference at the end that his future won't necessarily be happy. Word of God later retconned Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns into Mathias's Identical Grandson.
• The Social Network. It shows Mark's slide from average nerd to a possible Corrupt Corporate Executive due to one mean streak too many. Around the end of the film, he realizes his mistakes, but has somewhat realized he's gone too far to fix them and tries to make some amends by friend requesting his ex-girlfriend who he insulted over the course of the film.
• The Star Wars prequels as well as Star Wars: The Clone Wars are pretty much Anakin Skywalker's fall from grace. The original trilogy is his journey towards redemption.
• Stoker documents India Stoker's spiral from a polite and mostly harmless (if a bit creepy) teenage girl, to a murderer. This is largely thanks to her relationship with Uncle Charlie.
• Travis in Taxi Driver is a more ambiguous case. He starts out alienated, and then by the end he attempts to assassinate a senator (though, admittedly, he fails) and kills three people, two of whom were complete strangers. Interestingly, because he is never tied to the former, no one else in the story actually sees him as such.
• Washizu in Throne of Blood. Since the film is based on Macbeth, this is not a surprise.
• Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He starts off as our main character, but our allegiance gradually switches to his partners as he comes down with Gold Fever and eventually goes bad.
• X-Men: First Class revolves around Magneto seeking revenge for the murder of his mother and his increasing acceptance of mutant supremacy. He also persuades Charles' foster sister Raven (aka Mystique) to follow along with him so she can be accepted.
• Remus in the Italian movie Il Primo Re. At the start, he and Romulus are just two shepherds who love each other. Then a flood of the Tiber kills their flock and leaves them to be captured by the Albani to be sacrificed, and during their escape with other perspective victims he becomes progressively crueler, before snapping and turning to murder and burning down the village he had tried to settle in when the Vestal kidnapped from Alba prophetizes that the one who will found an empire will kill his brother, and at the end Romulus has to kill him to protect the villagers, fulfilling the prophecy in a way neither brother nor the Vestal had expected.
• In The VVitch, Thomasin starts the film as a pious Puritan who's trying her best to help her family survive out in the wilderness. Then the plot happens — the family is terrorized by supernatural activity, resulting in a Witch Hunt where the main suspect is Thomasin herself. By the end, Thomasin's been forced to murder her own mother in self-defense, everyone in her family is dead, and she's alone in the middle of nowhere with no food and no means to provide for herself, and winter is on its way. So she signs the Devil's book and joins the witches' coven, because it's her only hope for survival.

Literature

• Nineteen Eighty-Four combines this with The Bad Guy Wins, as The Party successfully brainwashes Winston into becoming another one of their drones before killing him.
• Breakfast of Champions puts a spin on this. From the get-go, it's a Foregone Conclusion that Dwayne Hoover will become a lunatic who will savagely assault several people. However, despite providing in-verse reasons for his change from a loving, charismatic man to a violently unhinged brute, it's ultimately because the author, Kurt Vonnegut made it so.
• The title character in Stephen King's Carrie (and its film adaptations) is a kind-hearted, but socially outcast teenage girl who spends the first half of the book getting slowly beaten down and pushed to her Rage Breaking Point by her classmates, the school faculty, and even her own mother. The second half is about the massacre she commits as a result when what happens at the Senior Prom makes her snap.
• This is Geder Palliako's arc across The Dragon's Path, the first volume of The Dagger and the Coin. Initially introduced as a bumbling, nerdy young knight from a minor noble family, the realization that he was set up to take the fall for his country's failed occupation of a captured city state (when taken in tandem with his Fatal Flaws of a Lack of Empathy when it comes to his big plans and a penchant for Disproportionate Retribution when he feels he's being mocked) drives him to his first atrocity, and he spends most of the rest of the book vacillating between saying I Did What I Had to Do and My God, What Have I Done?. Then he meets a creepy cult of spider-worshippers who have decided Geder is their Dark Messiah who will lead their religion in conquering the world, and who have the powers to make him believe it too. By the middle of the second book, Geder is well on his way to full Evil Overlord territory.
• The Empirium Trilogy: Rielle's storyline is about her transition from being the long awaited, beloved Sun Queen to the long feared and widely hated Blood Queen, traitor of her kind.
• Forest of a Thousand Lanterns: Xifeng starts the book as a good person, but gradually resorts to things like eating her court rivals' hearts to gain power, all for the purpose of eventually becoming Empress.
• Gingema's Daughter, the first book in Sergey Sukhinov's Emerald City series, is about the adventures of Corina, originally an ordinary, if somewhat lazy, girl. She starts her way as an understudy of Gingema, then runs away to travel with her wolf companion. She lives by different families, usually helping them magically in secret. But gradually, she decides that Being Good Sucks since everybody bothers you with requests, and being feared is as important as being loved. She deceives the Woodsman to do her bidding by pretending to be the daughter of his former sweetheart and ultimately manipulates him into deposing the Scarecrow, thus becoming the ruler of Emerald city. The rulership she establishes is a Crapsaccharine World: there is food for free and low taxes, but cross Corina in any way and you are dead or turned into a small animal. By the second book, she kills Ellie's parents and becomes a fully-fledged villain.
• In Gormenghast, the titular castle, a massive rambling city-state, is also an oppressive social structure where people are locked into their social roles and even their occupations from the moment of birth. No social mobility is possible and nobody has ever seriously tried to challenge the system. That is, until the advent of a kitchen scullion called Steerpike, who tires of being bullied and overworked in the dungeon kitchens. Escaping from the kitchens, Steerpike literally and metaphorically makes his way up in the hierarchy - initially by physically scaling the outside of the Castle. At first, he is a romantic hero who arouses the reader's sympathy. But little by little, his ambition to rise to the very top and supplant the ruling Groan family takes over, with deceptions, manipulation, and finally murder in support of his goal. The boy hero becomes a murdering villain, slowly but surely, across the course of two books.
• In Hekla's Children, a fantasy-horror novel by James Brogden, the story starts off as protagonist Nathan Brookes investigation into the discovery of a body in a bog and his quest for redemption in an incident 10 years ago that led to the disappearance of 4 students under his supervision. Much later in the story, he's revealed to be a Decoy Protagonist and through a millennias-old Time Loop is actually the monster that started the whole mess in the first place and then another character is revealed to be the true Chosen One.
• Despite the name, it appears that Heroes Save the World will be featuring at least a couple of these.
• In Livy's The History of Rome, which is a record of real events (though entirely based on legend for the earlier parts), embellished where the author felt it necessary, this is a major theme for more than a few of the kings and consuls of early Rome.
• The Horus Heresy has done this for Horus, Fulgrim and Lorgar and Alpharius Omegon.
• Michael Swanwick's thematically-paired novels The Iron Dragon's Daughter and Jack Faust are Deconstructor Fleets that demonstrate how SF/Fantasy genre wish-fulfillment fantasies end up turning the protagonists into Omnicidal Maniacs. The former has a female protagonist and targets Land of Faerie and Changeling Fantasy tropes, while the latter has a male protagonist and targets hard-SF "competent man" tropes.
• John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In and its Distant Sequel Let the Old Dreams Die seems to be one for 12-year old Oskar. Even before he meets Eli, a vampire who is physically and somewhat mentally also 12, Oskar starts out obsessed with serial killers and thinks about hurting or even killing his bullies. After he meets Eli he has no problem when she does kill the bullies. By the time of Let the Old Dreams Die, over 20 years later, Oskar is also a 12-year old vampire alongside his now-girlfriend Eli, and it’s strongly implied the pair have no issue with hunting innocent families.
• The Lightbringer Series does this with Liv, and also provides a fitting quote for this trope itself: "Idealists mature badly; they either become idiots or hypocrites."
• Magical Girl Raising Project: Both the ACES and the QUEENS arcs are this for Princess Deluge, leading her into becoming the new Big Bad.
• In the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson, this is the supposed backstory. A thousand years ago a champion, the 'Hero of Ages' rose up to defeat an (unspecified) evil known only as 'The Deepness' but upon his victory, he took possession of the world as its Lord Ruler.
  "For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years, the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity", reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible."
  • The heroes of this story find an old logbook written by the man who would become the Lord Ruler which shows how he began his quest as a humble, earnest man trying to save the world. In the end, the truth becomes far more complicated as the Lord Ruler's motivations are slowly revealed throughout the trilogy. The short version is that the hero, Alendi, was duped by prophecies being altered by Ruin, an Omnicidal Maniac deity trapped in the Well of Ascension who would be released if the hero reached the Well and "released" the power. When the scholar who originally prophesized the hero learned the truth, he had his allies pose as guides and murder Alendi when he reached the Well. Then one of the guides named Rashek took the power in the Well and kept it, keeping Ruin trapped and becoming the Lord Ruler. He was driven insane over time by Ruin, becoming a Well-Intentioned Extremist Evil Overlord.
• The story of Satoru Suzuki/Ainz Ooal Gown in Overlord (2012) is essentially a transformation from a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond accidentally having a New Life in Another World Bonus who just wanted to find his other friends in the world he's transported to as well as saving an innocent village from eradication, to an Evil Overlord who plots to Take Over the World using his superior power and his loyal subordinates, causing conflicts in various nations and then stepping in to solve it himself, as well as ordering atrocities far worse than he stopped earlier.
• This is the plot of the first three novels of The Reynard Cycle. Reynard begins the series as a Loveable Rogue. By the end of the third novel, he has morphed into the Big Bad. And he did it all for love.
• In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, Penelope and the rest of the Inscrutable Machine start relatively idealistic and well-meaning, only being labeled as villains for a couple mistakes and some misunderstandings. Their adventures gradually grow darker, culminating in their final attempt to become heroes backfiring and at least Penelope deciding to embrace her role as a villain.
• Shakugan no Shana: Yuuji Sakai goes down this road because he's sharing a body with the Snake of the Festival inside Reiji Maigo. However, in the end, this trope is downplayed in the final light novel. While incredibly ruthless, Snake of the Festival Yuji ultimately turns out to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, permanently saving the day by ending the Forever War and providing a world for Crimson Denizens to exist without devouring humans' Power of Existence, furthermore allowing the Flame Haze to finally lay aside their weapons.
• Yarvi starts out The Shattered Sea as a teen Guile Hero who while somewhat more ruthless than your unusual YA protagonist of this type, is still a good guy. After he loses a POV in the second book, he comes off as a more sinister figure and enacts some morally questionable plans, but since they work out for the best, he seems like he still might be the same old Yarvi. However, by the end of the third book, Yarvi is more or less the Big Bad and is a ruthless schemer worse than those he opposes, and is willing to sacrifice his loved ones and everyone else to satisfy his obsession with revenge and self-validation.
• The Shining. It starts off with Jack being a happy family man, albeit with a dark past, until the influence of the hotel drives him to madness and monstrosity.
• Fëanor's whole arc in The Silmarillion is his descent from hero to Anti-Hero to psychotic, obsessive Villain Protagonist.
• The Transformers: TransTech story "I, Lowtech" is the first-person perspective story of a Corrupt Corporate Executive trying to figure out why he seems to no longer be in his real body. While he was not exactly good to start off with, he was (technically) law-abiding and never caused direct harm. Until a combo of his first violent act done in self-defense and nobody taking his claims of a body swap seriously makes him realize Evil Feels Good/Evil Is Easy and causes him to start going insane and degenerating into a rampaging serial killer who kills just because it's convenient/for revenge.
• The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor deals with how Philip Blake/The Governor became what he is. Needless to say, it isn't what you were probably expecting.
• Well of Darkness, first book of The Sovereign Stone Trilogy, provides the origin story for Dagnarus, his lover Lady Valura, and his Dragon Shakur (though admittedly, Shakur was pretty evil even before he met Dagnarus). The subsequent two books deal with them as main villains.
• Ultimately inverted in The Wheel of Time. After acknowledging that he is, in fact, prophesied Dragon Reborn, Rand al’Thor is trying to be a fair and benevolent ruler. However, nobles are scheming behind his back, Andor doesn’t recognize him as legitimate regent, White Tower kidnaps and tortures him instead of providing support, and so on. So, Rand, battling with stress coming from great responsibilities, increasing paranoia and growing insanity, tries to become harder and to distance himself from loved ones. None of this helps his public image, as even loyal people start to question his authority. Finally he snaps, stops clinging to what’s left of his moral integrity and spends a whole book as stone-cold ruthless extremist, inducing primal fear in closest allies and literally spoiling the world around him. And then he is struck by enlightening epiphany, when he is seriously considering destroying the whole world.
• Wicked is the Wicked Witch of the West's descent into madness and evil.
• The wolf-dog protagonist in The Wolves of Paris began as a tragic puppy who lost his innocent views after a month, turning into a bloodthirsty, vicious and irredeemable dog who eats livestock and eventually human flesh for food.
• The first nineteen or so arcs of Worm describe how Taylor went from a bullied schoolgirl with dreams of being a superhero to Queen of the Brockton Bay underworld. That said, the trope is subverted after that, when Taylor quits the Undersiders to join the Wards, believing, based on Dinah's predictions, that this is the best way to save the world. Double Subverted later, when speaking to another villain who has committed atrocities in the name of saving the world, where she says that she would take it all back if she could, as the price was too high. Taylor's not the only one, either. Alexandria's Interlude shows her progress from an innocent teenager dying of cancer to one of the most powerful superheroes on Earth to an "ends justify the means" tyrant with good publicity.

Religion & Mythology

• In The Bible, David goes down this path. Despite being the runt of his father's litter, David becomes God's chosen one and he replaces Saul as Israel's king. For a time, David brings prosperity to Israel, and he is renowned as a hero by basically everyone in his country. David eventually lets the power get to his head, and he indulges in every kind of pleasure he can think of. One day David spots a woman named Bathsheba taking a bath, who was the wife of an officer in his military, and he falls madly in love with her beauty. Knowing that he can't steal Uriah's wife, David conspires to put him in a risky battle, hoping that he will be killed so he can take Bathsheba for himself. David goes through a long period of guilt over the remainder of his life, suffering the death of a child with Bathsheba, losing favor with some of his royal court, and finally ending a rebellion hosted by his son Absalom who died in battle. David believes very strongly that these misfortunes were God's punishment for his sin, and he spends his old age seeking forgiveness from God. Even though David fell from grace, the Bible notes that Solomon — the son of David and Bathsheba — brings even greater prosperity to Israel than even his father did.
• In Norse Mythology, there are quite a few myths starring Loki as a Guile Hero for the Aesir. Then he orchestrates the death of Balder, his motives for which are open for interpretation, and confesses to the crime while giving every other god "The Reason You Suck" Speech at a party. After that he gets rather painfully imprisoned and is destined to lead the army of Helheim during Ragnarok.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000: The Horus Heresy series discusses the events that ultimately lead to Horus betraying the Emperor, such as his brush with death where the Chaos Gods appealed to his repressed ambitions.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The novel "The Godeater's Son" explores this trope, as it follows the protagonist Heldenarr Fall from a peasant living in Aqshy's wastelands to a powerful Chaos Lord as he seeks revenge against the regime that's been oppressing his people.

Theatre

• Ebenezer explores how Scrooge became the cold-hearted miser he is at the start of A Christmas Carol.
• Hamilton follows Alexander Hamilton as he goes from an idealistic, eager revolutionary to a bitter, pragmatic politician who is forced to play the game and throw others under the bus in order to protect his reputation and gets what he wants. He eventually has a Heel Realization following the death of his son, who was killed trying to defend his father's honor in a duel, and is a more sympathetic character for the rest of the show.
• One of the best examples of this would be Macbeth. He starts off as a noble person and a good guy – a hero returning from war in triumph. But ambition which was fueled by his wife and the witches leads him to murder his king and usurp his throne and turns him into a monster.
• Othello starts out as a noble and good, if a bit daft, leader, but Iago takes advantage of his jealousy and manages to get him to murder his own wife in cold blood.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. A barber framed and transported for life for a crime he did not commit by a corrupt judge who wanted his beautiful wife for himself. He returns to London, finds out what happened to his wife and daughter in the meantime (though he turns out to have been lied to about the former by Mrs. Lovett, who led him to believe that his wife was dead because she wanted him for herself), and seeks revenge against the judge, leaving a trail of blood and death of innocents in his wake that would ultimately lead to him becoming the infamous Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Visual Novels

• Euphoria: While our protagonist Keisuke Takato already starts off rather morally ambiguous with his extremely unhealthy sexual deviancy, he at the very least has enough of a conscience to try and keep said deviancy under wraps until the Deadly Game forces his hand. Going through with the "Brute End", however, quickly has him lose all sense of shame to fully indulge in his sadistic desires, to the point that by the end of it he brutally murders one of the girls and condemns the others to a Fate Worse than Death.
• Raging Loop: Protagonist Haruaki Fusaishi is forced to repeatedly participate in a week-long game of werewolf in order to get out of "Groundhog Day" Loop, and gets increasingly darker as the game loops and repeats. The first time around, he's only a bystander who cannot directly get involved in the game, therefore making him responsible neither for killing villagers nor lyncing suspected wolves. In the second game, Haruaki is a villager and is forced to take several morally objectionable acts to flush out the wolves, which includes sending innocent people to the gallows to keep his Obfuscating Stupidity. In the third game, he's forced to become a wolf, and personally kills several of the people he's come to know over the course of the last two loops to finally end the loop. 'Luckily' the latter loop leads to the victory of the real villain behind the loops, forcing Haruaki to loop back for a final attempt and Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

Webcomics

• Pretty much the entire point of Errant Story, as Ian Samael ... changes over the ten-year run of the comic.
  • The other person on the receiving end of the same power-up actually went the other way, from a fairly antisocial and useless character to an active force for good. So the story is at least heavily implying that it was, in fact, Ian's own inability to deal with his issues that screwed everyone.
• In El Goonish Shive, based on what Pandora tells him, Tedd thinks that without his friends he might have taken the same path as Lord Tedd, one of his Alternate Universe counterparts who turned evil.
• Schtein's arc in String Theory (2009).
• The protagonist of Zebra Girl slowly goes insane following her transformation into a demon. Her drive to become human again slowly fades away the longer she remains in that form.
  • She finally DOES become human again when she betrays her friends, but it comes at the cost of being banished to an alternate dimension. At the resolution of the plot arc, she's seen to embrace her semi-former humanity AND her demonic essence, regaining her demonic form and abilities while rekindling her human compassion.

Web Original

• Played for Laughs in Allison Pregler's reviews of Charmed (1998), due to the protagonists' Designated Heroism and her own Alternate Character Interpretations.
  "I just got it. This show was actually playing us the whole time! The villains were the heroes, and the heroes were the villains! This was all leading to an Anakin Skywalker moment! We're presented with protagonists with massive power, destined for greatness, and the potential for immense good. However, slowly but surely, we're watching their downfall, leading up to the creation of three Darth Vaders. Out of the most unlikely circumstances, their own protege and her sister, raised by evil, must rise up and save the world. I should have seen it coming. Goodness gracious, Charmed, you Magnificent Bastard! You played me for a fool, but you were pulling the strings all along!
  "Or maybe this show is just fucking moronic, you choose."
• Both protagonists of Arby 'n' the Chief make this journey in Season 7. After spending most of the season isolated in real life from everyone except each other, having to grapple with their own mortality and crumbling bodies, and being repeatedly subjected to the douchebaggery of other players on Halo: Reach, Chief and eventually Arbiter both fall under Eugene's sway and join him in his Fragban spree across the network.
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog serves this purpose for the title character. Although it's more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Protagonist's Journey To Not So Harmless Tragic Villain.
• Soviet Womble's Random Arma 3 Bullshittery Part 9 is this, telling the story of a resistance group^note Either called the Badgers or M.I.L.F. fighting against the Russians, and slowly becoming more and more evil. Especially noticeable with Soviet, who acts as the most consistent Token Good Teammate throughout the whole thing, believing that they should be fighting for freedom and democracy, and is horrified by the some of the stuff his fellow players do, but by the end he's so worn down that he joins in using civilians as human shields during an attack on the Russian base.

Western Animation

• The core of Arcane is the story of how a fairly innocent child named Powder turned into the psychotic anarchist Jinx.
• DuckTales (2017): Enforced and overseen by Black Heron. Bradford Buzzard had a noble goal in mind when he presented his plan to Ludwig von Drake as a young man, even though he failed to recognize the villainous nature of his suggested method. From the moment Heron allied with him, she began strong-arming him into making concessions towards evil, with adding the F to F.O.W.L. being the first example. Bradford was ultimately responsible for his own choices, but Heron was dead-set on making a villain out of him — and succeeded beyond her wildest expectations, to the point even she feared his wrath during their final years together.
• Infinity Train Cult of the Conductor, follows Cracked Reflection's minor antagonists Grace and Simon of the Apex, introduced as passengers who rampage through the train and terrorize the inhabitants. As they find themselves separated from their followers and travel across the train to find them, they learn certain truths that begin to affect their worldview. Simon starts off as the more sympathetic of the two due to his abandonment issues, only for him to get worse mostly thanks to Grace's Toxic Friend Influence enabling his hatred for the train's denizens to the point where he projects his anger for his former companion at the accompanying Tuba by murdering her. And when confronted with the truth about their cult's conductor, Simon is unable to accept it even when Grace outright admits her lies to him. In response, he doubles down on the cult's beliefs and changes it for the worse, at the cost of his sanity and tragically ends up Dying Alone.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars served as an expansion on the circumstances that led to Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader, with his turn to The Dark Side explored in a much fuller degree and allowing for his Character Development to properly blossom. Its final scene is of Vader presumably reflecting on it.
• In episode 4 of What If…? (2021), it presents an Alternate Universe where Doctor Stephen Strange lost his girlfriend Christine Palmer instead of the use of his hands in the fateful car crash that would lead to him becoming Doctor Strange. In his grief, he has spent centuries absorbing mystic beings to gain enough power to reverse the Absolute Point regarding Christie's death. In the end, he kills his Good Counterpart and succeeds in overcoming the absolute point, only for Christine to end up not being alive again for more than a few moments... Because Christine Palmer's death in this timeline was supposed to kick off the events that lead to Doctor Strange becoming the sorcerer he is now, Strange Supreme's success in undoing the Absolute Point regarding her death ends up destroying the universe he once vowed to protect.
• The short-lived cartoon Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? would have been one of these if it hadn't been canceled so early. It was supposed to end with the titular protagonist leading a robot rebellion to wipe out humanity.

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