Basic Trope: A seemingly benign religion which was originally created for an evil purpose, and remains rotten at the core.
- Straight: Louis Cypher is the high priest of a religion which preaches kindness, faith in your fellow man and Team Spirit through 'contracts of good behaviour' with the high priest... in order to mass-produce easily deceived and pure-hearted dupes whose good souls are then sold to demons through the contracts.
- Exaggerated: Louis Cypher is the high priest of a religion whose converts are taught Incorruptible Pure Pureness... All of which turns the priests into omnipotent Eldritch Abominations who devour the souls of every living creature in existence and destroy the universe.
- Downplayed: The church is indeed benevolent, and Cypher does indeed have an ulterior motive... as a respected figure, he will be able to get away with jaywalking.
- Justified: Cypher wants to turn people off organized religion, so he founds his church intending for its "rotten core" to be exposed some day.
- Inverted: Kornelius von Drachs, a.k.a. Cornelius the Dragonblood, creates an underground cult that appears to be a Religion of Evil (therefore drawing in criminals and scum) that is intentionally designed to gradually teach its adherents goodness and virtue in the face of evil and make better people out of them.
- The Church of Shepard is made up from the ground up. They are entirely open about this, but have designed it so that people will benefit from a religion without actually believing in it.
- Subverted: A benign religion is found to be secretly buying up land and sending money to overseas accounts... because it's building orphanages without trumpeting its involvement.
- Doubly Subverted: ...but the orphans are sacrifices for summoning a demon.
- Parodied: A religion starts out benevolent, then starts talking about the more evil acts of their god very early on, and the potential converts don't even question how a benevolent deity could slaughter innocent babies, require human sacrifices, require all girls have sex with the high priest, or require they destroy all other races.
- Zig Zagged:
- The seemingly benign religion was founded by a money-grubbing Con Man.
- But he was hired specifically because of his skill at getting people to give away material possessions. This makes them less materialistic and benefits charities.
- Of course, he's also putting aside some money for himself...
- ...which his sponsors are fully aware of. They ultimately plan on the con being exposed, and so turn people away from other religions too.
- The real target is a Corrupt Church which they want to bring down.
- Why? Because in spite of the corruption, those worshippers are still empowering a cosmic being of Incorruptible Pure Pureness.
- But said cosmic being wants to wipe the world clean and start over...
- Averted:
- Saintly Church.
- Or religions are simply not mentioned, period.
- All bad religions are mundane, like a Corrupt Church and a Scam Religion without greater menace other than greed.
- Enforced: The author is against religion, so he puts this trope in all his works, as well as other tropes under the pretense that all religions are just attempts to restrict individual freedom, and many of them either force their beliefs on others or involve ethnic supremacy.
- Lampshaded: "Religion used to gather lots of tractable mooks. Who would've thought?"
- Invoked: Someone in need of money starts a religion, knowing it's an easy way to get charitable contributions while doing nothing.
- Exploited: Alice wants Bob to become an atheist, so she exposes Louis Cypher's religion, which is indeed wicked to the core while hidden under a mask of fake virtue. Therefore, all the other religions must be just like that!
- Defied: Followers of the Path of Inspiration, concerned about some suspicious acts by its founders, split off and become a Saintly Church.
- Discussed:Cypher: "I don't care what Final Fantasy has told you: Most religious people aren't out to get you."
- Conversed: "In these games, the church is always the bad guy."
Back to Path of Inspiration — but don't get fooled by their sugary speeches that coat a poisonous core.
