Basic Trope: Villainous groups tend to suffer because the people in them are willing to backstab their compatriots for personal gain.
- Straight:
- Emperor Evulz is on the cusp of defeating Alice's rebellion... but his lieutenant Bob screws that up by assassinating Charlie, a loyal and competent general, because Bob wants his position and share of the glory.
- Alice and Bob plan to rob Charlie. They pull off their heist, but when they're arrested afterwards, Bob rats out Alice in order to go free. When he does, he realizes that Alice lied to him about where she hid the loot in order to have it all for herself.
- Exaggerated:
- Everyone on Emperor Evulz's side suffers Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, including Evulz. Nobody gets anything done because they're too busy plotting to make sure no one else on their side upstages them by actually doing something.
- Alice and Bob only planned the heist in order to betray each other afterwards. Their creative plans to rat each other out were made far in advance of the actual robbery plans, and are better thought out too.
- Bob convinced Alice that he wanted an alliance with her to make a heist strictly so she would do all of the planning. Once she's done explaining how to do the heist, Bob kills her and follows her instructions all the way to victory.
- Downplayed:
- Emperor Evulz hires mercenaries. They want to make sure they get paid as much as possible, so they won't do anything Evulz doesn't explicitly pay them for. If he tells them to slaughter everyone in the rebel base, they'll do that, but that's all he gets. If they find important documents in the ruins, they won't bring them back, and may actually sell them back to Alice.
- Neither Alice nor Bob breaks the deal they made to back each other up and share the loot... but that only goes as far as Exact Words.
- Justified:
- No person who is actually interested in doing good would sign up with someone who calls himself Emperor Evulz and rules with an iron fist, so most of Evulz's recruits are the sort who are more interested in having power for themselves rather than helping the welfare of others. And if they put their personal ambitions above everyone else in their country, they're probably going to put said personal ambitions above their boss, too.
- Being criminals, by definition, involves screwing others over for one's own gain. The only thing different about the others also being criminals is that now one knows they're untrustworthy.
- Inverted:
- Alice's rebellion suffers from We ARE Struggling Together, while with Emperor Evulz, Evil Is One Big, Happy Family.
- The policemen going after Alice and Bob are so busy making sure that each other can't get the credit that Alice and Bob get away with robbing Charlie.
- Honor Among Thieves
- Subverted:
- Bob resents Charlie's success, and talks about killing him to open up his position... but eventually decides that he wants to do so on his own merits, and resolves to just do better than Charlie.
- Bob apparently rats Alice out, but really he's giving the police false information so she can get away.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob's work pays off and an impressed Evulz promotes him to general... causing Charlie to arrange his death out of jealousy.
- But the location the police were lead to contains evidence of Alice's previous crimes, enough to put her away for life when she's caught (and Bob knows she can't hide from the oncoming manhunt). Bob sent the police there in hopes that they could deal with her permanently, not for the few years she'd get if she was just busted for one robbery.
- Parodied:
- Alice gets Bob to switch sides by offering him a candy bar.
- Alice and Bob's plan fails because they can't agree on minor details like which shoes they should wear.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Emperor Evulz's office politics are very, very confusing. Sometimes it seems like his underlings are ready to backstab anyone for a candy bar, but other times they willingly team up and work together without a hint of animosity. Game of Thrones wasn't this bad...
- Bob rats out Alice, but this was a scheme so they could bust out of prison together, but then he leaves her to be busted for escaping prison, because this way he can go to court and paint her as an innocent victim who was framed for the robbery and then conned into escaping by some scapegoat. But Alice is sick of all the betrayals and not knowing if she can trust him or not and decides to rat Bob out, sending him to prison along with her.
- Averted: Honor Among Thieves
- Enforced: "An Aesop is supposed to be about teamwork, and Alice is never going to win against Emperor Evulz if his subordinates work together. Somebody on Evulz's side needs to betray someone else. Hmm, Bob has been established as a ruthless Glory Hound, so why not have him do the deed in order to get some more reknown?"
- Lampshaded: "It's always betrayal. These criminal types just can't wait for a chance to backstab for their own gain."
- Invoked:
- Bob is actually The Mole for Alice. He makes it look like he's just another ambitious underling backstabbing the dude above him to get ahead to disguise the fact that he actually killed Charlie because he would have defeated Alice had he lived.
- Bob is a police informant. The police stage a harsh questioning and all sorts of temptations to betray Alice, to hide the fact that he was actually on police payroll and was going to do it from the beginning.
- Exploited:
- Alice makes sure to encourage paranoia and jealousy among Evulz's underlings, since a house divided against itself cannot stand...
- The police offer witness protection, reduced sentences, and candy bars for criminals who decide to rat out their coworkers. This makes busting big operations easier for the police, since most minor catches can lead to big busts when the criminals happen to know something and think it will be better for them if they give it up.
- Defied: Emperor Evulz makes sure to reward teamwork and punish people who sabotage their coworkers. He wants underlings he can trust.
- Discussed: "Bob's the sort of selfish asshole who would sell out anything if you offered him some of the glory. This makes him a potential weak point- we need to watch him."
- Conversed: "We'll have to come to terms with the fact that backstabbing and total selfishness are in the DNA of villains. That's why they don't team up that often."
- Deconstructed: With all of these backstabbings, Evulz's army has a major disadvantage against Alice's La Résistance, who had found a way to avoid encouraging backstabbing with The Power of Friendship and his army is toppled not with a bang, but with a whimper.
- Played for Laughs: A group of Stupid Crooks suffer repeated comical humiliations more often from each other.
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