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Transhuman Treachery

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Going from a hapless nightly meal to gladly enjoying the perks of becoming the creature that killed them.
"But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be Human and isn't yet, or used to be Human once and isn't now, or ought to be Human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet."

Part of the Horror of being infected by The Virus is its ability to corrupt the mind of a victim, subordinating them into a Hive Mind or outright making them a sociopathic shell of their former self, intent only on killing or infecting their former loved ones.

But then there are times that a transformation doesn't brainwash, de-soul, drive insane, or demonically possess the victim. Other times the Viral Transformation causes changes that are purely cosmetic, granting amazing abilities albeit at great cost and (usually) a horrifying appearance. So what do these unwilling tranformees do? Become Phlebotinum Rebels or Vampire Refugees and use their powers to fight these monsters? Nope. They engage in Transhuman Treachery.

They sell out humanity and ally with who- or what-ever did this to them, regardless of whether or not they wanted to kill all vampires, robots, mutants, or aliens five minutes ago. There is no shock, only joy at becoming "more" than human and being able to flout society's rules.

If this Face–Heel Turn is too quick, it gives the impression that some other trope is at work, like The Dark Side, or With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. However, this trope may be justified a couple of ways. First, if The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body, then it doesn't matter that vampire Dan doesn't want to drink human blood, he has to, and trying to be friendly won't last. Second, someone seeking the Curse That Cures may make the painful choice to switch sides to save their life. Third, If the setting has an ongoing "race war" against what the character has become if they don't join their new race they'll quickly face death. Fourth, the character made the choice to become a monster and then betray humanity because they are a Misanthrope Supreme who hates humanity, which naturally means that they’ll happily betray their race to side with the monsters. Of course, in that instance, the opportunity for the misanthrope to become something other than human would probably be too good to pass up. However, most of the time the switch in alliances comes about with alarming speed and lack of concern. At best you'll see these Big Bad Friends offer the transformation to a friend or loved one... and kill them if they refuse. The Dark Side, they have cookies. The justification may be simply that vampires, etc., are Always Chaotic Evil, though many people don't see the concept of Always Chaotic Evil itself as justifying things because they think it's unrealistic or a lazy way to characterize evil vampires. May likewise result in becoming a "Join Us" Drone when confronting others.

It seems resisting these new biological impulses or avoiding becoming drunk on power is reserved solely for protagonists with Heroic Willpower.

A possible cause of Beware the Superman, this is the third sin in the Scale of Scientific Sins. Compare Sheep in Wolf's Clothing and Species Loyalty. Contrast Monsters Anonymous. May lead to forming an Anti-Human Alliance. Can overlap with Super Supremacist. Contrast Pro-Human Transhuman or Humanity Is Infectious, depending on the details. See Stages of Monster Grief for additional psychological attitudes about human grief without the human.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Because every demon in Berserk was once human, there's a good amount of this going around in the general universe. The Godhand picks their own by demanding that the demon-to-be sacrifice whoever or whatever he or she most cares about. Once someone becomes a demon, they usually cast off their humanity, with many of them engaging in eating their former species and/or raping people on the side. There are exceptions to the general norm (Zodd, Locus, and some others), but many demons are dedicated to spreading misery and suffering among humanity, which is exactly how the Godhand likes it. It does help that the humans chosen to become demons by the Godhand were picked specifically because they were the type most likely to accept the Godhand's offer.
  • In Blassreiter, Wolf Goring, the commander of the XAT, is infected with nanomachines and transforms into an Amalgam. Beatrice convinces him that this is a good thing, as only the Demoniacs will survive the coming Armageddon, and he sets to work infecting the rest of the XAT, all the while claiming it's for their own good.
  • In Claymore, this happens as soon as a Yoma Hunter loses control of her demonic powers and transforms into an Awakened Being. The Awakened Beings maintain their consciousness, but are quickly driven insane by Horror Hunger and/or The Power of Hate, as the mutations screw with their emotional states. It turns out that all Yoma hosts are like this; Yoma are gut parasites that amplify their victims' hunger until they turn into sociopaths who can only think about how to hunt their next meal, but are still otherwise the same people they were before being infected. This becomes a plot point when the ultimate Awakened Being is revealed to have realized that the Yoma who looked like her father was actually her father on Yoma Crack, and developed a Yoma-empowering type of insanity as a result.
  • Darker than Black: Tania has a quick and jarring personality shift upon becoming a Contractor. Originally, she was a kind person. She immediately becomes cold towards her friends and by the third episode is really enthusiastic about the idea of selling her friends out to an intelligence agency for a chance for promotion. She even brutally kills her childhood friend/crush Nika. The series also has several examples of Contractors who don't turn on their loved ones, so it's possible that kind people like Tania are actually more liable to turn to brutality and coldness upon suddenly becoming detached from their emotions, while a person who was already detached may not have quite as jarring a shift.
  • In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, newly born Demons are immensely hungry for human bodies and are noted to kill their entire families in hunger and bloodlust. The sole exception ever is Nezuko Kamado, who has to actively rein in her hunger of humans by sleeping and by chewing on a bamboo to keep her hunger at bay. The Horror Hunger is so bad that the mere act of becoming a demon (voluntarily or involuntarily) is an In-Universe Moral Event Horizon for Demon Slayers. Kaigaku and Kokushibou, the former Demon Slayers who became Demons are considered evil to the very core for this very reason by the people they fight against, which includes the junior for the former, and the brother for the latter.
  • This is what happened to Acnologia in Fairy Tail after he transformed into a Dragon after overusing his Dragonslaying magic. Before this point, he actually wanted to protect humanity from suffering under dragons' heels like how his own family was killed by them while getting his revenge... but then overuse of his magic and his transformation drove him Drunk with Power and he decided destroying everything was actually pretty damn fun. This was a real enough threat to other Dragonslayers (in fact, many of those early Slayers ended up like him, but were killed with few exceptions) that the dragons Igneel, Metalicana, Grandine, WeiĂźlogia and Skiadrum sealed themselves within Natsu, Gajeel, Wendy, Sting and Rogue (respectively) to prevent them from becoming Dragons just like him. The former three decided that it was worth leaving their children completely in the dark about what had happened, and the latter two went as far as pretending to let their sons kill them in order to preserve the illusion.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, when a vampire turns a human into a zombie by drinking their blood and passing on a vampiric extract, the Undead seems to immediately turn viciously evil. One scene has a woman pleading with Dio to spare her baby, and he agrees, on the condition that he can drink her and turn her into a zombie instead. Immediately after the transformation, she tears her own baby apart.
  • In Macross Frontier, the Big Bad who instigated the Bug War with the Vajra turns out to be orchestrated by Frontier's sister colony ship, Galaxy, which has implemented cybernetics into all of their citizens.
  • In the Monster Association arc of One-Punch Man, Gouketsu, a monster who was formerly a human martial artist, crashes a fighting tournament and reveals that he became a monster through eating a monster cell. He then offers any of the fighters in said tournament the chance to become monsters as well. A few take him up on the offer, mostly out of fear for their lives, but also because a few were either a Sore Loser who either Saitama and Suiryu had knocked out of the tournament (and in the case of Bakuzan, came into the tournament to enjoy killing people) or were power hungry or held another kind of ambition to begin with. Indeed, once they eat a cell, they have no qualms about exclaiming about the boost of power they gain and attacking people.
  • Tokyo Ghoul zigzags all over the place. After becoming a Half-Human Hybrid, Kaneki begins down a slow path of abandoning his humanity in favor of living fully as a Ghoul. However, he remains sympathetic to humans and refuses to kill them. On the other hand, the Creepy Twins Kuro and Shiro readily betray humanity after becoming half-Ghouls. In the sequel, Seidou Takizawa fully embraces the trope while Kaneki has become a full-blown Pro-Human Transhuman.

    Comic Books 
  • Being vamped in 30 Days of Night pretty much instantly makes you a sociopath. To date only three people have had the moral strength to resist this, everyone else basically gives in to their inner jerk.
  • Vampirization in DC vs. Vampires essentially turns every character — whether originally hero or villain — into a blood-crazed psychopath. The one exception is Damian Wayne, who became a Hunter of His Own Kind.
  • Marvel Zombies:
    • A disturbing example shows up. In the worst Mad Scientist fashion, after Reed Richards sees a zombie She-Hulk eat his children he decides (after studying the zombies) that they are the next evolutionary step and turns the whole FF into flesh-eating fiends! note  Also from the same book, Zombie Infectee Giant Man knocks out and hides Black Panther because he wants to have a "snack" to eat later, knowing his former colleagues would kill the world's population in days. He slowly amputates T'challa's limbs and eats them to stave off his hunger. He survives, thankfully, and gets a new leg out of it.
    • In Evil Evolution, it's suggested that Reed is inadvertently to blame for unleashing the virus upon his universe to begin with, thus piling guilt issues on a genocidal scale on top of everything else as well.
    • Zombie Spider-Man was hit with the business end of the Horror Hunger stick just as he got home to Mary Jane and Aunt May. Hilarity ensued.
  • A major topic in newuniversal is the American government's concern that this applies to the new superhumans created by the White Event, and the actions of one agent to wipe them out before that happens. Ironically, this couldn't be further from the truth. The people given powers are meant to protect mankind, and help them grow culturally. It's just unfortunate circumstance that means they're either unbalanced or unaware of the nature of their powers.
  • In Peculia and the Goon Grove Vampires (pictured), the three babysitters fall unwittingly prey to the vampire family they were tasked to look after (they were tricked into doing the job by the eldest daughter of the family). When Peculia flees into the woods after dispatching two of the family members, she comes across the newly risen and turned girls who're clearly enjoying their new undead status. Stating how wonderful it feels and try to convince Peculia to join them by stating it as "Only a brief feeling of obliteration and then you'll live forever!". Needless to say, they don't look to give Peculia a choice in the matter.
  • In Swamp Thing volume 2, issue #39 (part of Alan Moore's run), a recently-vamped boy taunts one of his parents about how they were too ineffectual to protect him while he tears out the other's neck.
  • In Transmetropolitan, both ends of the spectrum are represented: Fred Christ's Half-Human Hybrid Transient Gray aliens are all-too-quick to embrace their newly-bought alien side and their role as a vengeful, oppressed minority. On the other hand, Tico and other "foglets" are living it up as nanomachine clouds, holding no ill will towards mankind. And then it's stated that Transients draw most of their recruits from humans who already have alienation issues, making this possibly an Invoked Trope.
  • In Victorian Undead 2: Sherlock Holmes vs Dracula, Lucy Westerna avoids being staked upon her awakening after being turned and sides with Dracula to takes over London. In each confrontation with the protagonists, she goes on and on to the protagonists how she likes the power that being a vampire has given her. However, she reveals that she's not very loyal to Dracula either, leaving in the middle of the conflict with her newfound power rather than be killed. Notably, in a reversal of the novel, she's not killed either and still at large in London to spread vampirism at her own pace.
    Lucy: (after Helsing offers her "peace" in exchange for revealing Dracula's whereabouts) Peace? Do you imagine I am in pain, professor? A tortured soul? Look at me, I'm magnificent! In my warm life, all that expected of pretty little Lucy was to marry well and become a broodmare. Squatting out children and dancing to my husband's whims and fancies. Now I am so much more, I had to die to become fulfilled. I am stronger than all of you, faster — the things I can see and hear — I am extraordinary!

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): The Many's Hive Mind subsumes the consciousnesses of the humans it absorbs, making them work as part of it to seek out more victims to "save" via forced assimilation into their "family".
  • In many The Conversion Bureau stories, those who are ponified end up renouncing their human past, if not outright working against it. Other stories invert this, having converted humans adopt the opposite view.
  • Halkegenia Online: Ephilates is quite pleased with being turned into a faerie, and refuses to tolerate the faerie lords' attempts to return to earth. To that end, he allies with the conspiracy to overthrow the crown.
  • The Zombie Apocalypse depicted in Just One Bite is curious for this reason. When turned, the zombified are hit with an intense bout of Horror Hunger demanding they tear apart anyone nearby- but only for a bit. Once it wears off, the zombie regains their personality, and all seems well apart from being a walking corpse. However, as Judy realizes over time, there's a second, unstated effect of the disease- the need to propagate, forcing the brain to decide that being zombified is actually preferable to being alive, and overlook even the vast injuries they may have sustained in the turning. Judy overcomes this first, realizing how much she hates being dead, and she's one of the lucky ones. Marian lost both her eyes and Corduroy is only an immobile head, and their realizing how awful their circumstances are helps them mentally heal as well.
  • My Abominable Monster Classmates Can't Be This Cute!: Justified. Becoming one of the human-Grimm hybrid "children of Salem" not only suppresses the subject's more human emotions, it runs the risk of wiping their memories of their lives before they were turned, meaning that "tutelage" under Salem's Academy of Evil is the only life they remember ever knowing. Ruby and Weiss don't consciously remember anything of their human origins, and Weiss is shocked to discover that she has human relatives after she meets Winter. Yang, however, does remember her past after her aura is unlocked, but she's so bitter and cynical towards her former species that it doesn't matter to her, and she sticks to the hybrids' instilled propaganda that humans are inferior and xenophobic until the Internal Reveal that her "pack alpha" Jaune was a human himself the entire time brings Yang's world crashing down around her.
  • Queen of All Oni:
    • Jade counts as this, since the dark chi that transformed her into her Queen of the Shadowkhan persona also altered her personality.
    • And in the second half of the story, Jade kidnaps Viper and force feeds her Ikazuki's chi (killing him in the process), transforming her into Hebi, the new General of the Samurai Khan, who is completely loyal to Jade. Justified, as Jade specifically designed the ritual that caused this change to corrupt Viper.
  • In the PokĂ©mon: The Series fanfic Resident Hybrid infection, part of the horror of the virus transforming its victims into PokĂ©mon/human hybrids is how swiftly most victims accept the change after it happens. Ash's new ally Sherry has seen some people go on killing sprees after they transform, and it doesn't take long for May to 'seduce' Serena into joining her in a campaign to make Ash their mate (along with Dawn, Misty, and maybe Sherry, with current plot twists suggesting that Lillie and Anabel will also join Ash's harem), with others observing that it's impressive that Ash has held onto himself after a couple of days in his new Lucario form.
  • In The Swarm of War, what used to be James (and is now the new Overmind) and its transformed human servants care little for humanity.
  • Played With in Tough Love, where Charlie strongly suspects that his daughter already considers humans naturally inferior to vampires and is eager for Edward to convert her. So he pointedly asks her just why she spends so much time with the Cullens when she doesn't seem to like the family that much, causing an eavesdropping Edward to realize the truth and break up with her.
  • Total Undead Drama: Seen as early as when Sadie and Katie are turned. While still retaining their valley girl personalities, they likewise have no qualms in hunting and feeding on blood, are devoted to their master, Storm, and gleefully capturing others to present to him to add more to the ranks. Other notables are Anne-Maria who let herself be turned, Ella, still retaining her princess demeanor while hunting (she cites the turning as a blessing since she can let loose her wild side without the stresses of holding it back while still keeping her personality), Sugar who, despite loathing that Ella turned her, loves the power. Gwen was resistant at first but came around, claiming it the "ultimate darkness nirvana".
  • In Vainglorious, the Light Elves are born from the souls of humans. Over the centuries they've become overly proud and believe it is their duty to guide the "lesser" races such as humanity via conquering them and making them vassal states.
  • In Webwork, with all the humans being transformed, there's a lot of this trope going around:
    • As a result of her transformations, subsequent isolation in the Emptiness, and Tarakudo and the Gumo Queen's manipulations, Jade is perfectly willing to fight against humanity to provide a future to her unborn kits, though she does have residual affection towards her human family, and it's commented several times that she isn’t really that monstrous in personality.
    • Nivor expresses the desire to eat the J-Team once his transformation is complete and it's not technically cannibalism anymore.
    • Tarantula relishes her transformation the most out of all Jade's minions, taking it as an excuse to be the immoral and sadistic monster she really is deep inside and has even been attacking and killing homeless people under Jade's nose. Part of the Gumo Queen's deal with her is that the Queen will make her even more inhuman if she succeeds in taking Jade out.
    • Simon Leston, the new Squid Khan General, is an Ax-Crazy Misanthrope Supreme. As such, by the time we meet him, he's not only fully transformed but has become an outright Eldritch Abomination in the process.
  • The Wedding Crashers has Bella furiously rant about how vampires are naturally superior to humans, placing them above all pitiful mortal concepts of "morality" and "laws", and that humans should only exist as cattle for vampires to feed upon at their leisure. She does this right in front of her heartbroken father, who ultimately disowns her as a result.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • A heroic example occurs in Avatar. As Jake gets used to his new body, he also shifts loyalties towards the alien race, and he eventually leads them to war against the humans. By the end, he gives up his human body to stay with the Na'Vi. So do all the other Avatars, for that matter.
  • Pretty much every vampire in the Blade Trilogy, whether five minutes or five centuries old, is invariably fine with messily killing humans. Vampirism comes with a nearly insatiable thirst for human blood. The handful of exceptions were all cured with an anti-vampire drug, and, of course, Blade, himself (being a Daywalker) is the big exception. Blade did feed on humans at one point, mostly homeless people, but that was before meeting Whistler and developing the thirst-suppressing serum.
  • In Bordello of Blood, Catherine is kidnapped by Lilith's men and brought to a bordello. She awakens to find herself tied down with her younger brother, Caleb, now turned into a vampire (which was fairly obvious since the last time we saw him human was when Lilith was approaching him for a three-way), standing over her. She begs him to free her but he claims he can't.
    Caleb: I gotta play by the rules here. I know how you feel, I didn't want to be a vampire either... at first. But after you get used to it, it's pretty damn cool!
  • Seed of Chucky: It took until this movie, but Chucky eventually decided that he liked being stuck in a Killer Doll form, actually. Although, he was a Serial Killer before then, so he wasn't exactly your regular, sane person to begin with...
  • Count Yorga:
    • All the turned victims instantly become evil and obey Yorga without question. For example, Erica attacks Hayes along with the other brides, tries to attack Michael when he comes across the dying Hayes (and yet oddly gives him a chance to stake her, through he doesn't go through with it), and attacks Michael and Donna as they're leaving right after Yorga is killed, showing that the vampirism is permanent and she is beyond saving, plus that the vampires are inherently evil. We also find out that the blonde-haired bride of Yorga's is Donna's mother (who at the beginning had "mysteriously died"), who likewise attacks Dr. Hayes with the other brides. An unused scene also shows that she has become monstrous enough to eat a baby. Donna herself turns at the end of the film and instantly attacks Michael when his guard is down.
    • In the sequel, Cynthia's sister Ellen joins Yorga's brides after his harem attacks their family. She, along with the other brides, torments Cynthia mentally as she trying to find her way out of Yorga's mansion. She is also part of an ambush on her boyfriend which results in him killed and thrown to the vampire brides for food (of which Ellen joins in on). At the end, one of the heroes, Balwin, succumbs to vampirism after Yorga is killed and instantly claims Cynthia as his own victim right after he saves her.
  • Hilariously averted in Day Shift. Despite surviving decapitation after briefly succumbing to Horror Hunger, Seth doesn't act much different after being turned and remains on Bud's side throughout the whole film.
  • Very frequent in the Hammer Horror Dracula films.
    • Horror of Dracula: Lucy, after becoming a vampire, preys on her niece as one of her first victims.
    • The Brides of Dracula: A village girl and a school teacher, Gina, fall victim to the vampire Baron and instantly become evil upon resurrecting. Though oddly the Baron's mother doesn't succumb to this trope when she is turned.
    • Dracula: Prince of Darkness: Helen, the protagonist's sister in law, tries to attack her two remaining family members upon becoming undead.
    • Taste the Blood of Dracula: Another character named Lucy is turned and helps Dracula and her hypnotized friend killed her father and later bites her boyfriend.
    • The Satanic Rites of Dracula : All the women in Dracula's cellar were once agents investigating the cult a company had ties with and were captured and turned. In the film, we see the secretary of one of the agents, Jane, kidnapped herself and turned by Dracula. When Jessica discovers her in the cellar and tries to free her. Jane bares her fangs and tries to bite her, helping the vampire women knock her down so they can feed on her. She also tries to pull the same trick on her boss as well.
  • In Dracula 2000, while two of Dracula's brides are somewhat ambiguous (Solina was a thief as a human and seems to gleefully relish being a vampire, and we don't know much about Valerie as she just a reporter in the wrong place at the wrong time), Lucy fits the trope well as she was a roommate of Drac's main target Mary and the two got along well. Once she was turned, however, she had no reservations on attacking Mary with the other two brides.
  • In Dracula Untold, once the fledgling vampires Vlad has sired are finished with the Ottomans, they start eyeing Vlad's son hungrily. Their spokes-pire even going so far as to say "they (humans) are all our enemies now."
  • Anyone bitten in the From Dusk Till Dawn series. The infection is more akin to a zombie bite and once the victim turns, the only thing on their mind is attacking anyone human for their blood (which is a very messy process since these vampires tend to rip off limbs) or bring into their ranks.
  • Averted in Let the Right One In. Eli feeds on people and will often use the fact that she looks like a 12-13-year-old girl to appear harmless. However, she clearly does not enjoy doing it and only does so when she can no longer resist the hunger. After her first shown attack in the film, she looks like she's about to cry afterward. The only time she deliberately unleashes death is at the end when the four bullies are attempting to drown Oskar. This clearly angers her immensely and launches an Unstoppable Rage.
  • Though any movie with still sentient zombies has this, The Return of the Living Dead shows how Freddy "has an epiphany" that the only thing that can stop his pain and will show Tina's true love for him, is letting him eat her delicious brains.
  • Lillian and Mara in the first Subspecies film. Mara is the first victim of Radu's, after being buried and rising as an undead later, helps Radu lure out her friend Michelle and capture her. Lillian is kidnapped in the middle of the film and slowly turned by Radu. We actually see her becoming a monster as her transformation finishes while Michelle and she are trying to escape Radu's castle. Lillian instantly turns on Michelle once her fangs form, scaring her right into the arms of Mara. The next scene sees the two dragging Michelle to Radu so he can bite her and even smiling wickedly as they hold her down so she can't escape, pretty much solidifying their loss of humanity. Radu succeeds in turning Michelle, but she mostly flip-flops on this trope through the series, trying to fight from becoming an all-out monster like Radu is though falls off the wagon now and then due to his influence.
  • The Titan: The project to turn the volunteer test subjects into a new species of humanity that can settle on Titan ends up killing or driving insane all but two of the subjects—Rick Janssen and Tally Rutherford. Tally then goes and kills her husband for no apparent reason. While another subject had killed his wife earlier, he had clearly gone insane. No reason for the death of Tally's husband is given other than the process has made Tally monstrous and inhuman.
  • This is thought to be the case with Will's nanomachine-augmented hybrids in Transcendence. It's not.
  • The hemophages in Ultraviolet (2006) follow the "race war" scenario, but since the humans treat them like a plague to be eradicated, it's not like they have a lot of options. In the beginning, two investigators arrive at the scene of the crime, where a hemophage's body can be seen. One of them accidentally touches the blood. Two seconds later, his partner pulls out a gun and puts a bullet in his head (which is, of course, ignoring the fact that he's bound to get some of his partner's blood on him).
  • Magneto tries to invoke a sympathy version of this by planning to turn all the world leaders into mutants in X-Men, it being less "I'm going to make humanity my bitch!" and more "I'd better pull back on the anti-mutant rhetoric and policies since I'm one now."

    LARP 
  • Humans vs. Zombies breathes this trope; once tagged, you become a Zombie, and you need to feed. Of course, that doesn't mean you still can't have a vendetta against the other humans who were less than helpful in keeping you safe...

    Literature 
  • Ultimately downplayed in After the Revolution. During the Second American Civil War, the US military used advanced cybernetics to convert hundreds of men and women into powerful cyborg soldiers, in the hopes that they could effectively crack down on the multiple rebellions and unrests tearing the country apart and save the federal government from collapsing. Instead, the cyborgs ended up deserting en masse, and some of them even joined the various rebel factions and helped to usher in the federal government's downfall. When Manny reflects on the events of the war, he thinks no one should have been surprised when they all deserted, because men shouldn't expect gods to fight their battles. Following the war, it is not an uncommon viewpoint amongst the surviving cyborgs to consider themselves superior to baseline humans, but they also by and large tend to lead pretty peaceful lives and keep to themselves and are generally not interested in taking over the world or killing all meatbags. Jim is pretty much the only cyborg our main characters encounter who has thoughts even vaguely in that direction.
  • Almost Night:
    • When Stella becomes a vampire, she becomes as evil as the rest of them and takes great joy in killing humans and animals.
    • The homeless group that turn into vampires all decide to go kill stuff as soon as they're turned.
  • Behind Blue Eyes: Big Bad Metatron considers cyborgs to be a superior being than regular humans, particularly those of the Guardian Angels and resents that he's forced to subordinate himself to the Olympias Corporation board that is made of regular humans. He makes several not-so-subtle attempts to get more freedom over his group's actions and alludes to overthrowing them.
  • In Oleg Divov's Brothers in Reason, the Big Bad turns out to be a result of a Soviet experiment to turn 1000 children into psychics; only half-a-dozen children survived the process. He is one of the three to actually get enormous Psychic Powers. Subverted in that the two other super-psychics, as well as numerous other lesser ones, stayed true to their ideals.
  • In The Dresden Files, all the vampire courts appear to have this to a greater or lesser degree. When the Red Court fully transform the human part of them dies entirely, though the physical form is still used as a "flesh mask" by the creature within. However, they don't cross over until they kill a human and drink their blood, and several members of the organization dedicated to fighting the Red Court are Vampire Refugees. The Black Court are Dracula-style vampires, but little is mentioned about how they reproduce except that they do it fast, which does imply a pretty complete transformation. The White Court are the least hit by it. They end up sharing their body with a demonic Hunger that heavily influences them, but it is possible to fight against it. They're also a family, so it's more a matter of accepting the family business than a 180-degree allegiance switch.
  • Dust Devils: After becoming vampires, Martha Black and Angelica both turn away from their humanity almost immediately. Martha embraces the vampire side and even views the guy who slaughtered her family, Adam Price, as a sort of god.
  • In the Federation of the Hub story "The Machmen", the machmen claim this is the case, but the protagonist believes they are merely being brainwashed as well as enhanced.
  • Harry Potter has the sadistic human-hating werewolf Fenrir Greyback, who kills and eats people even when not transformed, and who aims to infect as many humans as he can with lycanthropy. He takes an especially creepy interest in infecting children and grooming them to hate normal Wizards and Witches.
  • In the Immortals After Dark series, Webb is a fanatic bent on destroying immortals, believing them to be unnatural. He becomes immortal himself, and promptly begins plotting the subjugation of the human race he championed, having decided that he's now part of a master race or some such. Really, it's just a predilection of his; the only thing that changes is which team he's on.
  • In Known Space, if an ape or hominid at a certain age eats from the Tree of Life, they become a Protector (too young, and it doesn't do anything; too old and they don't survive the metamorphosis), enter true adulthood and underdo a massive amount of changes, making them stronger, faster, more resistant to damage, and granting them super-human intelligence. A Protector is compelled to protect their genetic lineage from any possible harm. As a matter of course, Protectors exterminate any nearby alien species on the grounds that they might become a threat. Most Protectors are only interested in protecting their direct descendants and are perfectly willing to nuke other human groups to do so. It's a rare Protector who can make themself feel concerned for humanity as a whole, and usually only either when all of their own lineage has been killed off, or when they realize that helping humanity as a whole is the best way to help their own bloodline. Word of God says that the more intelligent a Protector was as a breeder, the easier they can make the jump to protecting everybody and not just their own children.
  • "The Man Who Evolved" might be the Ur-Example. A man invents a machine that accelerates his evolution. In the first two stages, he is still somewhat decent in behavior. In the third stage, he states he intends to take over Earth and use it as a laboratory. The protagonist stops him by convincing him to evolve further. It works; the next stage is beyond such desires.
  • In The Mortal Instruments, this is completely inverted. Werewolves and vampires change only physically, not mentally, through their transformation. They are not eager to hunt humans, nor are they malicious. Unfortunately, it took a long time for the shadowhunters to recognize this and no longer discriminate against them. The only (known) exception is a girl named Maureen. As a human, she was rather annoying, but as a vampire, she is a cruel murderer. But it is speculated that the circumstances of her transformation have driven her crazy.
  • Usually averted in the Revelation Space Series, but there are a couple of exceptions.
    • In the series backstory, there was a war between baseline humans and the Conjoiners, who have a cybernetic Hive Mind. The Conjoiners would forcibly convert their baseline prisoners. These people decided that being everyone and knowing everything was awesome, willingly fought for the Conjoiners, and violently resisted attempts to revert them if recaptured.
    • The Prefect includes Aurora, the only survivor of the eighty experimental subjects who were uploaded into computers. Some trauma was involved (like seeing all her fellow Transmigrants freeze or crash), but basically, she decides that her survival trumps everyone else's and plots to kill everyone in the Glitter Band habitats for safety.
  • Played ambiguously sympathetically in The Shadow Over Innsmouth when the hero, after realizing that he is one of the Half-Human Hybrids descended from the Deep Ones — and is gradually turning into a Deep One himself — accepts and even embraces his future as a monster. Many readers have interpreted this as Sanity Slippage (a trope that does show up in a few of H. P. Lovecraft's stories), but the writing itself is a lot more cogent than the stream-of-consciousness style that Lovecraft would use for a protagonist who is truly descending into madness, suggesting that Innsmouth's hero is fully in control of his own faculties, and making a deliberate choice.
  • The majority of vampires in Shiki, though not all of them are happy about having to. Any who choose not to engage in this trope stand out as a result. Megumi, one of the first turned, is a very notable example of this trope, however.
  • In So I'm a Spider, So What?, three humans reborn as monsters show little to no regard for the lives of humans, and a newly turned vampire has a similarly skewed morality.
  • Inverted by Myria Lejean in Thief of Time: rather than a human made into a monster choosing to be a monster, she is something inhuman made into a human that ends up choosing humanity's side. (Humanity Is Infectious, but the other incarnating Auditors merely go insane from it.)
  • Inverted in The Vampire Files with Whitey Kroun, who'd actually been prone to rape and murder women while drugged out of his mind prior to becoming a vampire. His transformation rendered him unable to do drugs anymore, and brain trauma suffered when he died stripped away his memories of his past misdeeds and their motives, allowing him to achieve a Heel–Face Turn because he'd ceased being human.
  • Vampire Hunter D: Being made a vampire in this world is like this, even for vampire hunters! In Bloodlust, the eldest of the vampire hunting brothers is turned, and he instantly sides with Carmilla and threatens to kill a former associate by drinking her dry.
    • Possibly With Great Power Comes Great Insanity, thanks to what can happen with Dhampirs, or what happens in Book 2, in which a person is, in fact, a 'latent' vampire. She's actually surprisingly reasonable, but with a complete personality change afterward.
    • In The Rose Princess, a woman with an axe to grind against the titular vampiress (said vampiress had killed her family) is turned in an unusual fashion. After D kills the vampiress, Elena asks D to join her in ruling over the humans and comments that being a vampire is so much better. There's quite a bit of insight given into her psychology, though. Averted with a later human, who resists/rejects it.
    • In fact, it gets a lampshading/explanation in Book 1... there's debate over whether someone being turned is murder, as the victim is still around, but the personality changes are severe. Then again, books 1 and 2 mention a few times that vampire victims who hadn't been turned yet had more than their blood drained out of them, which would go a long way towards explaining things.

    Live-Action TV 
  • When Tory discovers that she is a Cylon in Battlestar Galactica (2003), in contrast to Sam, Saul, and Galen, who all go through What Have I Become?, and Ellen, who finds a measure of peace in the revelation, it doesn't take her long to start seeing the benefits of it and how it means she's 'better' than humanity, something the ordinary Cylons no longer really boast about anymore (though they did use to). She even advises actions that would likely have caused thousands of humans to die in the mid-season finale, all of which makes little sense given that the Cylons she's with are actually in a weaker position than the humans at that point. In light of what happens later, maybe she should have waited a while before throwing her eggs into another basket.
  • Being Human (UK):
    • Lauren is less than humane. Mitchell transformed her into a vampire to "save her" from dying when he fed on her and has regretted it ever since, not least because the once sweet and kind Lauren has taken to her vampiric biological mandate with gusto and sociopathy. In episode 5, Lauren redeems herself, only to once more demonstrate that Redemption Equals Death.
    • Herrick has put some thought into this trope, and decided that evil isn't the answer, it's the moral imperative.
  • In Big Wolf on Campus, werewolves have an evil syndicate, and everybody who becomes a werewolf turns evil... except for the protagonist, for reasons that are never really explained. And yeah, this includes our other main characters when they are temporarily transformed, too.
  • Buffyverse:
    • All the vampires. Instantly. Although "you're not looking at your friend. You're looking at the thing that killed him," is the official story from the start, this gets... layered over time. Because vampires may have had their souls replaced by demons and a complete moral rewrite, but they still have the same memory set, and in some cases, this hits harder than others.
      • For example, in the flashbacks shown in Angel, Darla was quite pleased with Angelus's decision to kill off his entire hometown to one-up her suggestion that he do the normal thing and kill his loved ones. After he got to his family, she took great pleasure in pointing out how yes, he was evil now, but he was still him, and now his father could never approve of him, being dead. This hit home.
      • William/Spike does exactly this, and there's Vampire Willow. When Vampire Willow is sent back to the Alternate Universe she came from, main universe Willow is reassured that a vampire's personality has nothing to do with the human they were turned from...but it's obvious that Buffy is lying to make her feel better. Theories exist that the vampire character derives from everything suppressed by the original human, but this only applies in some cases. Harmony, for example, starts killing people and decides she wants to be some kind of dark lord, but honestly doesn't change at all. It probably has something to do with self-image. People with low self-esteem seem to change more, but the completely pathetic seem to stay pathetic. That Liam and William seemed like losers but turned into badass vampires probably indicates that they had Hidden Depths.
    • In the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of Riley's friends gets hybridized with demon body parts by Adam against his will. Despite being a trained and loyal soldier involved in a demon hunting/capturing program, he completely switches sides after the operation because he liked the power. That as well as being dead and re-animated.
    • Being a werewolf, Veruca feels sorry for normal humans, because they will never feel as alive and free as she does. She lives by her instincts (which include killing), simply because she sees it as a natural thing to do.
    • Dawn does flirt with this idea when she finds out that she is the Key, figuring she shouldn't have to follow the rules if she isn't really human. But this is really just the emotional reaction to the shock mixed with teen rebellion (and a little showing off for her crush, Spike).
  • Dark Hole: After being infected Jin-seok opens the doors and deliberately attracts the zombies' attention, unleashing them on the other survivors hiding in the school.
  • Done several times on Doctor Who.
    • Evil industrialist and Diabolical Mastermind Tobias Vaughn from "The Invasion" has undergone partial cyber-conversion by the Cybermen but retains his emotions and appears outwardly human.
    • In "The Ark in Space", one of the crew gets infected by the Wirrn, and is turned into one of them. He's also the one that causes the ship to blow up after the Doctor tampered with it, and he theorizes he must've had just enough humanity left in him to resist the Wirrn's hive mind.
    • "Doomsday" both plays it straight and inverts it: most humans converted into Cybermen immediately side with them, but Yvonne Hartman has enough Heroic Willpower to break free and prevent the Cyber-Leader from escaping back into the Void Between the Worlds.
    • Inverted by Dalek Sec, who exhibits signs of Trans-Dalek Treachery in "Evolution of the Daleks" after merging with a human.
    • In "The Next Doctor", the Cybermen attempt to make their collaborator Miss Hartigan their "King", but she turns out to be exceptionally strong-willed — while most of her morality gets discarded, she retains her emotions and is able to take control of the Cybermen's Hive Mind. The Doctor defeats her by breaking her link to the Cybermen's programming, causing her to see what she had become and destroy both the Cybermen and herself.
    • Subverted in "The Doctor Falls". The Doctor says that this isn't actually an inherent property of cybernetic augmentation; plenty of people get bits swapped out without turning murderous. The problem is that eventually, someone decides to remove all emotion and program in a desire to "upgrade" everyone else, and then you have an army of Cybermen rampaging across the universe. This is also why the Cybermen are so tenacious — it doesn't matter if every single one of them is destroyed, eventually someone will create new ones.
  • In the final season of Earth: Final Conflict, the Atavus are introduced. They feed on human Life Energy through their claws, which is fatal and doesn't result in passing on their vampirism, but they turn people into human/atavus hybrids using the hibernation pods they came out of, who feed the same way. Even Plucky Comic Relief tech girl J Street is unable to resist the urges after she gets put through a "joining" (but fortunately, a cure is finally developed in the same episode).
  • Played for Laughs in The IT Crowd when Douglas gets a robot hand, then proceeds to smash the items on his desk while laughing maniacally.
    Moss: I would have used my robot hand for good!
  • A staple of the Kamen Rider franchise. Many of the villains were once human but have given it up due to their season's power sources. Averting this is a constant theme for the heroes, who usually get their own powers from the same place but choose to fight for humanity instead.
    • Kamen Rider: The top executives of Shocker are all humans who converted themselves into Kaijin in order to gain the power to rule over their fellow humans, becoming henchmen to a Satanic entity in the process. Several of them are Nazis who joined to be a part of a literal Master Race.
    • Kamen Rider BLACK: The Gorgom cult make use of this as their modus operandi. They entice influential figures in Japanese society with the reward of becoming a mutant, and gaining thousands of years of life, if they serve Gorgom well and help them subjugate humanity in exchange.
    • Kamen Rider 555: Orphnochs are humans who have a gene that allows them to evolve into superpowered mutants if they're put in high stress situations. While most Orphnochs would prefer to resume their lives as humans, the leadership of Smart Brain are a collective of Orphnochs who believe a war between humans and Orphnochs is inevitable, and so they seek to exterminate humankind first.
    • In Kamen Rider Blade, the Big Bad pulls this by first creating an artificial Category Ace Undead, and then merging with it to enter the Battle Fight himself, so he can win it and use his wish to become ruler of the world.
    • Kamen Rider Kabuto: Masato Mishima willingly collaborates with the Natives in their plan to turn all of humanity into Worms, and becomes the Gryllus Worm in the finale to fight Kabuto and Gatack.
    • The Dopants in Kamen Rider Double are humans who used Gaia Memories to convert themselves into monsters, usually so they can commit some sort of crime. The Zodiarts of Kamen Rider Fourze are similar, being humans who transformed using an Astral Switch to.
    • Kamen Rider Wizard: Wiseman turns out to be a human who imbued himself with an artificial Phantom in order become one, although he did so in pursuit of an ulterior goal he was still willing to victimize fellow humans in order to achieve it. Gremlin is an inversion, as while he did survive the Phantom process by merging with his Phantom, his goal is to forsake being a Phantom and return to being human, even if he has to terrorize other humans in the process. However, he's such a monster that Haruto even flat out refuses to acknowledge him as human, Phantom or not.
    • Kamen Rider Gaim: Ryoma Sengoku seeks out the Forbidden Fruit of Helheim so he can pull this by using it to become a god and shape humanity to his liking. The Overlord Inves are Human Aliens who pulled this, by embracing the power of Helheim and using it to enforce a social darwinist dystopia on the weaker members of their kind.
    • Kamen Rider Drive has the Fusion Advanced Roidmudes, which are the result of a Roidmude fusing with a willing human collaborator. There's also Tenjuro Banno, who converted himself into an AI to gain the power to rule over his fellow humans.
    • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Masamune Dan eventually pulls this by merging with Gamedeus, the Final Boss of Kamen Rider Chronicle, to use its powers in a last ditch effort to defeat the Kamen Riders and take over the world.
    • The Megid generals in Kamen Rider Saber are eventually revealed to be a trio of humans who warped the power of the Almighty Book to turn themselves into monsters. Master Logos plays with this, he developed a protracted lifespan as a result of being exposed to the Almighty Book, and because of that saw himself as a god who has every right to rule over and torment humanity as he sees fit.
  • The Synthetics in Odyssey 5 are either completely synthetically grown Artificial Humans or nanomachine enhanced humans. The latter have to obey the genocidal AIs which created the nanites, being even part of a low-grade Hive Mind; however, Chuck Taggart reveals after reversing his assimilation that the process can't completely subsume a human unless they want it to. The terrifying implication being that those humans infected want to serve the AIs.
  • Prey has a new species evolving from humanity and living in secret among us. These Homo Dominants (as they're named later) lack any emotions and have an instinctive desire to dominate and/or destroy humans, believing that, otherwise, the much more numerous humans will destroy them just like we killed the Neanderthals. They are stronger, faster, and smarter than most humans (one episode shows they have mastered nanotechnology). The protagonists are a group of scientists who discover the existence of the Dominants and fight to stay alive and reveal the truth to the world (with the help of a Dominant who has second thoughts). After the revelation, the government, as expected, starts trying to eliminate the threat to humanity by striking first. Peace talks between human and Dominant representatives are disrupted by radical elements. Both sides attempt to figure out ways of turning one species into another (humans try it with a drug, while Dominants create a nanovirus that rewrites DNA).
  • Supernatural:
    • All the Psychic Children we meet who aren't killed before they can turn their demon-blood-born power toward Azazel's murderous expectations. Jake even kills Sam and unleashes hell on earth, intending to lead an army of demons against humanity. Sam, who never intentionally betrays humanity, seems to be the only exception.
    • Gordon Walker was already an antagonist before he got turned into a vampire, with the goal of killing Sam because he believed Sam was the Antichrist and would lead hell's army against humanity. While a turned Gordon (says he) planned to kill himself after killing Sam, along the way he killed to feed, killed newly made vampires, killed the hunter he was working with, nearly killed Dean, and turned a young woman as a distraction.
  • Teen Wolf: The fullness of the moon triggers a shift in personality for werewolves, which can be overcome by experience (Derek) or a special focus (Scott). Then, there are cases like Isaac, Erica, and Boyd, who are generally more bully-like regardless of the lunar phases. This is particularly ironic because Isaac, Erica, and Boyd were all bullied before they received the bite.
  • The vampires in Young Dracula seem to experience shades of this:
    • After Ingrid bites her boyfriend Will, he goes from a relatively nice guy who helps wimpier boys open their lockers and was freaked out at the sight of her fangs to living at the castle with her (as opposed to whatever his family situation was before), joining her in mocking her father and brother and admiring her evil plan to trick Count Dracula into getting himself destroyed so she can take over, not to mention being among the crowd of vampires that bare their fangs at the innocent Branagh family to make it clear that they're on the menu.
    • Ryan goes from telling his sister to kill him, to scratching out her photos and expressing disgust at her "breather" status.
    • After Vlad bites Erin, she goes from being the face of the Vampire-Slayer alliance to biting people and actively breaking the ceasefire.

    Music 
  • The Jonathan Coulton song "Re: Your Brains" has this as its central premise, with the singer using office lingo while attempting to talk a (former) co-worker into allowing himself and the other zombies in to eat the survivors' brains.

    Tabletop Games 
  • This is a very heavy risk for changelings in Changeling: The Lost, to the point it's actually encoded into the game mechanics.note  Members of the Autumn Court, whose philosophy is based on basically trying to scare muggles away from the supernatural and to study the supernatural themselves, are quite likely to develop this kind of attitude as well.
  • Dungeons & Dragons werebeasts generally have a set alignment, with even good-aligned werebeasts experiencing significant personality alteration. This was used for horror in Eberron, in which this — as a magical effect — is one of the few cases of Always Chaotic Evil the author left in the setting; during the Lycanthrope Purge, which Keith Baker has described as "28 Days Later with werewolves", the alignment-enforcing power of the transformation was abused by infectious lycanthropes to do things like turn everyone in a town into wererats in order to get them to betray templars.
  • Eclipse Phase:
    • Exhumans are people who modified their bodies and minds too much and became utterly alien to the rest of transhumanity in the process.
    • Extreme bioconservative factions generally perceive all of transhumanity in this way.
    • To a lesser extent, a large portion of uplifted animals (especially the Mercurials) adopt a lesser version of this that isn't so much actively turning on humanity as not wanting to have much to do with it one way or the other when not absolutely necessary.
  • Paranoia:
    • The human membership of the Corpore Metal secret society works to increase the prevalence of cybernetics in the hope of eventually uploading every human into a superior robot body. The bot membership figures there are enough bots to run Alpha Complex already, and simply exterminating the humans and taking over would be lots easier. Corpore Metallics who manage to completely replace their organic parts with cyber, effectively becoming bots, invariably side with the latter group.
    • The same is true to a lesser extent with biological transhumans. Mutants with psionic powers are eagerly recruited into the Psion conspiracy, one of the few secret societies that does pose a legitimate threat to Alpha Complex.
  • In Pathfinder, a werebeing's alignment shifts while they're in animal form, resulting in the character willingly and gleefully diving into all the evil of being a monster. How they treat it while not in animal form, and whether they embrace or attempt to deny their new nature, is less set in stone.
  • Clan Tzimisce of Vampire: The Masquerade deserves special mention; all vampires in the setting suffer from humanity degeneration, but the Tzimisce have explicitly become transhumanists after developing Vicissitude. They tend to lose their humanity quite a bit faster than average. Then again, that's partially due to the general what-the-fuck-ery of Clan Tzimisce, and partially due to their membership in the Sabbat. The Sabbat truly, honestly believe that vampires are better than humanity, and have the right to rule over the "cattle" as they see fit. This often involves chainsaws and crime sprees amongst the younger Kindred, and utterly alien moral codes amongst the elders.
  • Warhammer 40,000: The Traitor Legions were formerly part of the Legiones Astartes, the greatest defenders of humanity. Half of them wound up following their Primarchs into rebellion against the Emperor and turned to Chaos for various reasons during the Horus Heresy, becoming the first Chaos Space Marines. While most of the forces of Chaos are comprised of normal humans, mutants, later founding and some loyalist marines who decided to join their ranks, the original nine Traitor Legions remain amongst the most powerful and respected forces of Chaos. They're now utterly dedicated to tearing down the Imperium they were once sworn to protect, and have slaughtered billions (possibly trillions) of people in the process.

    Video Games 
  • Subverted in BioForge. The Mad Scientist hoped this trope would come into play after he upgraded (and deformed) you, but instead made you into a vengeful Phlebotinum Rebel. Ironically, the protagonist still becomes what he hates in the process. He loathes them for trying to turn him into a murderously deranged cyborg... and by the end, he has become just that — only directed at his creators, casually killing anyone even slightly related to his capture and transformation.
  • The root of everything that goes wrong in Bloodborne. The Byrgenwerth scholars that cracked open the Pthumerian tombs, their Healing Church successors, and most of all the School of Mensis, all wanted to transcend mortality and humanity. Their obsession and inter-faction conflict encapsulate pretty much everything that went wrong with Yharnam before or after the spread of the Beast Scourge.
  • Civilization: Beyond Earth:
    • Purity-aligned factions see Harmony and Supremacy factions as a bunch of transhumanist nutbars who are tossing away their humanity — as well as the needy humans back on Earth — to run off and turn themselves into freaky half-alien mutants and cyborgs, respectively. However, Purity factions may or may not be simply A Nazi by Any Other Name if some of their flavour quotes are any indication, so there is room for this trope to be inverted. That said, even pure Harmony and pure Supremacy think the followers of the Harmony-Supremacy hybrid affinity are going too far.
    • The Supremacy faction is especially guilty, as the victory condition associated with them involves invading Earth with their military and forcing the humans to evolve against their will. The Harmony faction, by contrast, merely wants to cooperate with the living planet they reside on.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII conforms to the general idea, though his origin story is a bit more complicated: Shinra tried to create a human with the abilities of the Ancients by infusing an unborn child with the cells of a specimen known as Jenova. Unfortunately for everyone, Jenova was not a real Ancient, but what had destroyed the Ancients, a malevolent Starfish Alien-become-Humanoid Abomination. In the main timeline of the game, Sephiroth returns after having figured this all out and seems to have Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence, but a totally psychopathic one where the only other subject he kind of acknowledges is "mother" Jenova. His plan is to wound the Planet fatally so that he can absorb The Lifestream into himself and become a god.
    • In Final Fantasy XIV, if an Ishgardian drinks the blood of a dragon, they themselves will turn into a dragon. Nidhogg, the leader of the dragons who are hostile to humanity and has an outlook of Revenge Before Reason encourages this practice among the heretics who side with him over their countrymen, as he delights in seeing them so consumed by hatred and vengeance that they'll forsake their mortal forms for a draconic one. This is because of a different type of transhuman treachery, from the founders murdering the dragon Ratatoskr in cold blood to eat her eyes for power to transcend their mortal limits, and it's stayed in their blood ever since.
  • Half-Life 2: The Transhuman Arm of the Combine Overwatch combine this with being Les Collaborateurs. Humans start out joining Civil Protection to get decent rations; promotions are tied to voluntary brainwashing until they become eligible for Mind Rape and modification into actual transhumans (though the Combine often picks up random civilians for conversion too). Soldiers presumably go through the same rank system with the highest-ranking Elites being more like synths than cyborgs.
  • In Honkai Impact 3rd, the titular Honkai energy can corrupt humans and lead to transformation with sufficient exposure. Most people will simply become zombie-like creatures, while there is a small chance that someone with high resistance will instead be reborn as a Herrscher. These god-like beings are consumed with a twisted desire to wipe out humanity, commanding the forces of the Honkai in terrible campaigns of destruction. Ironically, many with strong Honkai resistance are recruited as soldiers, meaning that any moment your teammate could suddenly transform into a new enemy commander. In the Previous Era, the corruption of Captain Himeko caused them to become the Herrscher of Flames and led to a week-long rampage that reduced the entire continent of Australia to a burning wasteland. Similarly, in the modern era, Ana, the commander of Snow Lotus squad, would awaken as the Herrscher of Ice and wipe out her entire team before freezing much of the tropical city they'd been protecting. However, one of the themes and turning points of the story is how some of the Herrschers can retain their humanity while still wielding the power that comes with being one, and use their powers to protect humanity and fight the Honkai back. That eventually reaches its peak with the protagonist Kiana becoming the ultimate Herrscher, "Herrscher of Finality"; back in the Previous Era, this Herrscher was the one who ended up destroying said civilization, while Kiana has understood what Honkai and Finality truly stood for, and is now capable of using the power of Finality to improve the lives of humanity.
  • Mass Effect:
    • Played with in Mass Effect 2. In the Overlord DLC, because of the extensive cybernetic implants that Shepard received from the Lazarus Project that brought them back to life, this was enough to allow them to become temporarily hacked by David Archer. This doesn't actually stop Shepard, however, but simply lets them see the world in Matrix Raining Code.
    • In Mass Effect 3, Javik explains that this happened to a species during his time: the Zha'til. They resorted to cybernetic implants to save themselves and wound up being controlled by the implants and changing into a synthetic race which waged war on the rest of the galaxy. They are one of the main reasons Javik hates AIs so much.
    • Cerberus's use of indoctrinated soldiers and the Illusive Man's plan to make humans the dominant species via control of the Reapers are other examples, with an emphasis on treachery, as TIM ends up indoctrinated by the endgame.
  • Mortal Kombat:
    • Deconstructed in Mortal Kombat X. While most of the Earthrealm heroes turned revenants retain their original memories, they were brainwashed by Necromancer Quan Chi to the point of extreme hatred and rage, causing them to align more with the Netherrealm during the 25-year gap. They feel good committing evil deeds in the name of Big Bad Shinnok, with Liu Kang and Kitana being the worst examples, feeling disillusioned by the thunder god who condemned to their fates at the end of Mortal Kombat 9, and so, they decide to become Co-Dragons to Quan Chi and Shinnok. While Sub-Zero, Scorpion and Jax are restored to the side of good by Raiden, the other revenants aren't so lucky as Scorpion couldn't contain his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Quan Chi and kills him off without realizing why the sorcerer was needed, thereby condemning them to a Fate Worse than Death. With Shinnok and Quan Chi gone for good, Liu Kang and Kitana voluntarily decide to become the Netherrealm's new rulers, thereby shaping them up to become future villains. Kung Lao's and Kung Jin's MKX arcade endings show while it is possible for the revenants to overcome the brainwashing via Heroic Willpower and embracing positive emotions, they were brainwashed to the point of extreme hatred, making this a long road to recovery should they ever find redemption. Intros with Sub-Zero, Jax, and Scorpion show that even after being restored to life, it left them traumatized and psychologically scarred to the point they either self-isolated themselves or contemplated suicide.
    • Frost, upon allying with Big Bad Kronika and becoming a cyborg in Mortal Kombat 11, also dips into this. She's always been entitled and arrogant, but here it's cranked up to the point that she even turns her defeated opponents into robots.
  • The Vanu Sovereignty of Planetside are Scary Dogmatic Aliens minus the being aliens part, a crazed cult of scientists and tech-heads who have been "touched" by Precursor technology and are out to "enlighten" humanity whether it wants to be or not. A possible explanation is the Vanu technology's neural interfaces, not designed to work with human minds, have driven the people of the Sovereignty insane.
  • PokĂ©mon Black and White, of all things, has this in the Yamask-Cofagrigus family. Yamask Was Once a Man and carries a mask of its former human face, which it sometimes cries over. By the time it evolves into Cofagrigus, it begins seeking to capture and mummify humans.
  • [PROTOTYPE 2] has this in spades for the Evolved, a super-strain of infected that retain their intelligence and "humanity" while gaining combat and infiltration skills. Later in the story, a chemical has a chance to turn those nearby into Evolved if released, and those transformed will turn on their former allies. This even applies to Blackwatch soldiers, who take containment beyond seriously.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Half-Human Hybrid Fusion Dances always end like this. The interested parties seldom lose their identities but become quickly enchanted with their new fancy powers and start allowing their fanaticism and ego to dictate their actions. It's more a case where every negative emotion is amplified by the simple fact the newly minted hybrid is so drunk on power he or she no longer bothers to answer to any problem he or she can't deal with by simple power.
  • StarCraft:
    • Kerrigan is Queen Bitch of this trope. At first in StarCraft, she's somewhat mind-controlled, but also fairly autonomous. Then she's entirely autonomous and sells out the human race to lead the Zerg. She seems slightly sad about trying to kill Raynor, but she gets over it. Apparently tied to the very nasty mental conditioning and childhood she had.
    • When she infests Ethan Stewart, he becomes an intelligent and fairly free-willed Zerg-Terran (and she knows it, so she threatens him if he ever turns against her). He immediately falls in love with her and follows her orders and does everything to gain her approval. It doesn't work. StarCraft II goes into a bit more detail, and the Zerg Campaign will likely go into more...
    • By the end of the plot of Heart of the Swarm, it's become complicated. The Xel'Naga began molding both the Protoss and the Zerg into what they are now, apparently because it's just how their species perpetuate themselves. But their work on the Zerg was subverted by Amon, the Dark Voice, who gave the Zerg a biological imperative to obey him and destroy the Protoss. The Overmind freed the Zerg from that by getting himself killed so Kerrigan could take over. But it turns out that even when freed from Amon's influence, the Zerg are still a Horde of Alien Locusts. Once freed, Kerrigan is relatively humane and an Anti-Villain, but still more inhuman than she was before.
  • String Tyrant requires this for two hidden endings. A doll Mary with her mind can still use the "transform" command. Dolls are immortal so it might be a blessing. Hope you don't feel too bad about having to sacrifice Jessie/Lauren.
  • In the supplementary material for Sword of the Stars, this is the case with the Locusts. They were once an organic race until they invented Brain Uploading, upon which some of those who became engrams decided they were superior to the baselines and bombed the latter back to the stone age before setting out into the void to make more of themselves while wiping out the inferiors.
  • Touhou Project:
    • This is the reason why Byakuren was sealed in another dimension. In her pursuit of immortality via black magic, she began to sympathize with youkai and instead of outright sealing them, she began trying to find ways to ensure peaceful cooperation between humans and youkai. While Byakuren was brimming with good intentions and her youkai followers adored her, the big problem lied in that said followers were a bit unclear on some Buddhist tenets — particularly on why eating sentients is bad, and the humans depended on her for exterminations. In the end, she was sealed in Makai for "consorting with youkai" for her attempts at fostering friendship between the races.
    • Alice is stated to be antisocial and unpleasant to humans but takes politeness and Sacred Hospitality as seriously as most of Gensokyo's denizens.
  • Warframe: While nearly everyone is transhuman by the start of the game (and none more than the player characters), there are still some worth noting.
    • The Grineer are clones with failing genetics who think everyone else is inferior.
    • The Corpus routinely brainwash civilians and even force them to take on cybernetics that make them easier to control — including full cybernetic heads.
    • Meanwhile, the Infested, though primarily mindless, are also quick to turn on their former allies in the rare instances where they retain their minds.
    • The setting's Abusive Precursors, the Orokin, were the posthuman ruling caste of the extremely oppressive and decadent empire of which the three aforementioned factions are remnants of (the Grineer being expendable slave labor who Turned Against Their Masters, the Corpus being a merchant cult founded in Orokin times, and the Infested being a bioweapon they lost control of). One of their more egregious atrocities was the practice of burning out children's brains in order to transfer their own minds into the resulting Empty Shells.
    • The Tenno (the player character faction), certainly betrayed the Orokin, but no doubt the ordinary citizens considered it an aversion. By all accounts, the Tenno had a much stronger grasp of ethics than their masters.
  • In West of Loathing, eating too many beef products from the demonic Cows gives you Cowrruption, which increases your stats, but causes you to willingly join their stampede in the ending cutscenes. If you've summoned and bound Duke Bovnicus, you automatically take his place as the Cows' leader.
  • EXALT in XCOM Enemy Within was a Nebulous Evil Organisation of well-dressed, transhumanist, Big Bad Wannabe cultists seeking to use alien DNA and technology to Take Over the World while the world's governments were preoccupied trying to resist the Alien Invasion. They take their Bio-Augmentation much farther than XCOM ever did, and as a result their troops start looking more like the Thin Men.

    Visual Novels 

    Webcomics 
  • Brock from Braceface Fangface and Brock of the Undead. He becomes a bloodsucking corpse who is subservient to his master's will but finds that the power outweighs the downsides and happily turns his girlfriend into a vampire as well.
  • Charby the Vampirate: Charby once explained that this effect is there to keep a new vampire from immediately turning around and using his/her powers against the one that sired them. It doesn't last forever and can be overcome by sufficient willpower, but in some cases it's More than Mind Control.
  • Invoked and subverted with the undead in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures. Dark Pegasus created the undead virus in order to raise an evil army at his beck and call, and expected this to happen; unfortunately for him, he rushed the project to strike at the time of a big celebration and made a mistake in his haste: the undead raised with their memories and personalities intact, and most tried to return to their normal lives.
  • Dracula: Ruler of the Night:
    • Lucy takes to being a vampire so well that Dracula comments that it feels as if she had been one of his usual brides all along despite being turned in modern times. Likewise, Lucy's mother Minerva gives into vampirism pretty fast after being bitten by her daughter, though she does gripe a bit on being bitten at an older age.
      Minerva: [to the hunters during a confrontation] I am envious, to become a walking corpse at this age. Still stuck with every wrinkle of my twilight years. -Sigh- Oh well, to feel younger is a most excellent prestige.
      Harker: You can't possibly enjoy such a ghastly activity as drinking blood every night, Lady Westenra?! Come to your senses!
      Minerva: Ohoho, my dear boy, what you see as madness is just normalcy to me now. I'm sorry, but the me you know from before is dead. I am [Dracula's] bride now and I do not intend to upset him.
    • Likewise Milly Van Helsing, mostly out of gratitude to Dracula, as being turned allowed her to be cogent again after she went mad as a human due to the loss of her son. According to her, becoming Dracula's bride was better than wallowing away in a mental asylum. When confronted with her husband, she cites it as "Nothing personal, but you did leave me to rot."
  • Durkon Thundershield of The Order of the Stick is a Double Subversion when forcibly turned into a vampire. When he is freed from his sire's thralldom, he viciously attacks his sire's killers, suggesting that he's succumbed to vampires' intrinsically evil natures. He doesn't deny the evil part but subverts it by saying that he's still committed to the Order and their quest. It's later revealed that undead "Durkon" is a spirit created by Hel, the goddess of the dishonored dead, and is stealing memories from Durkon's trapped soul to impersonate him while he advances Hel's agenda. Inverted when Durkon forces the vampire spirit to experience enough of his memories, and the emotional growth that came from them, to turn it into himself.
  • Walking in the Dark: While vampires aren't inherently evil upon being turned and can go on to live semi-normal lives, just now with the need to protect themselves from the sun and needing blood but not necessarily having to drain humans to do it, those that were bad in life will have this negativity increased after becoming one. For example, Priscilla of Ian's gang was a Bratty Half-Pint in life. When she was turned in an effort to save her from a knife wound caused by a human bandit, she instantly killed her father and relished in feeding on humans left and right because she still had that child-like mindset. Kids Are Cruel, after all, so giving them supernatural powers leads to disaster.

    Web Original 
  • Played with for Joan Rivers in Aldrivers, Devourer of Cos in that Joan was already a monster when she decided to eat Bill Cosby. Her eating him was to show that monster personality out to the rest of the world.
  • In the Metamor City podcast novel Making the Cut, this happens to Miriam after she's turned into a vampire. The vampires order her (which cannot be disobeyed) to not kill herself, do anything against them, lie to them, and she has to operate as a spy for them. They eliminate every possible option for rebellion/escape or letting her Psi Collective people know what happened to her in any way. They miss one or two tiny loopholes, which she exploits for all they are worth in an attempt to save her allies.
  • Orion's Arm presents the phenomenon of "hyperautism", a condition that arises following the ascension of a mind to one of a higher toposophic level with the result that it can fully comprehend and model the mental and emotional states of its former peers. They effectively lose the ability to see less capable beings as sentients, instead envisaging them as simple automatons or even extensions of their own minds. This can result in Hyperautistic Sociopathy when the transcendent mind sees its former peers as tools to be used and abused as it sees fit.
  • The zombies in Persuaded operate off this as a result of the virus. The protagonist assumes them to be classic flesh eating zombies, only to realize with horror that their true power is the ability to subtly convince humans that zombification is preferable.
  • In the works found on VampYou.com, all vampire transformations work like this. Anyone who is turned gets a villain card.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time: Dr. Gross describes herself as Human+ and believes that the next logical step from glasses and artificial hearts is scissor hands and telescoping spider legs. Her ultimate plan is to build a hybrid army, return to Founder's Island, and forcibly convert everyone there into cyborgs.
  • More a case of trans-Transformer treachery, but in Beast Machines, when Tankor is revealed to secretly be Rhinox of all people, it turns out that after getting forcibly turned into a Vehicon, he decided that Evil Feels Good and has no intention of going back to being a good guy.
  • Gargoyles:
    • Inverted with the Pack. When Coyote, a robot, offers various "upgrades" to the other members, Jackal and Hyena become Cyborgs and Wolf becomes a Half-Human Hybrid. Dingo, the group's Only Sane Man, forgoes the transhumanism, takes a suit of Powered Armor, and later makes a Heel–Face Turn. Thing is, the guys who remain bad guys were always crazy.
    • Dingo himself is an inversion, as he only fully makes his Heel–Face Turn after himself becoming a transhuman by bonding with the nanotech AI Matrix (though it's a bit unclear whether Matrix bonded with Dingo, or just his armor). Matrix also makes a Heel–Face Turn as part of this process (Dingo and Goliath having convinced it not to initiate a Grey Goo scenario) and allows Dingo's consciousness to remain in the driver's seat, though it is able to speak to him.
  • Johnny Test: In "Fangs a Lot Johnny", Once the girls become vampires, they instantly claim they want Johnny and Dukey's blood and go after them. Johnny's only able to get them back off for the moment by reminding them they really want Gil which they agree and fly off. Giving the boys time to think of a way to get them back to the lab to get them back to normal.
  • The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror IV" has the segment "Bart Simpson's Dracula", in which Bart gets captured by Burns and bitten. Later that evening, he visits Lisa outside her bedroom with a few other kids he's turned and tries to convince Lisa to let him bite her.
    Bart: Come join us, Lisa, it's so cool. You get to stay up all night drinking blooood.
    Milhouse: And if you say you're a vampire, you get a free small drink at the movies.


 
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Vampire Caleb

Tales from the Crypt - Bordello of Blood (1996): Catherine has been captured by her brother Caleb, who has been turned into a vampire by Lilith. Catherine begs him to let her go, but, having long been a douche bag when he was human, joining the undead has just made him worst than ever and lacking any empathy he might've had for her welfare.

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