The Paragon Always Rebels / Video Games

• Larry Foulke, alias Solo-Wing Pixy, in Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War starts off as the Number Two in the best squadron of the entire Allied air force, but eventually grows disillusioned with the Allied strategy, his own Belkan heritage probably helps, and joins the terrorist organization A World With No Boundaries, eventually facing off against his former flight lead. Needless to say, that fight is so epic, they made an entire extra level just for the two of them.
• Several sources cite Carmen Sandiego as one of these, having once been the best Acme agent in the world before growing bored with it and deciding becoming the criminal she was assigned to catch would be more of a challenge.
• The highest-ranking members of the Apocalypse Cult Ultimate Despair in Danganronpa were once students of Hope's Peak Academy, a school dedicated to raising teenagers in the top of their respective fields to be inspirations to the rest of mankind. Due to a mix of brainwashing and their own insecurities, they instead ended up driving everyone around them into their brand of madness.
  • Zigzagged with Izuru Kamukura, the Big Bad of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. Due to the experimentation done on him to turn him into the Ultimate Life Form in the hopes of creating a new messiah, he had his personality, memories, and emotions removed turning him into a perpetually bored Empty Shell. As a result, the Greater-Scope Villain Junko was able to manipulate him into going along with her Evil Plan and frame him for her crimes, making it seem as though this trope was in play.
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins gives us Teyrn Loghain, the king's commander and Ferelden's national hero for driving out the Orlesians despite being a mere peasant. He goes on to abandon his king to his fate, the son of the man he fought beside during the war against Orlais, before usurping the throne and throwing Ferelden into chaos at the worst possible time. He did, however, truly believe he was right and that his detractors were wrong.
  • A somewhat literal example lies in the story of Branka, the dwarf Paragon whose obsession with the Anvil of the Void led her to commit unforgivable atrocities. Although it is implied that she was a pretty bad person long before she found the Anvil. The Anvil just helped things along.
  • The Dwarf Noble (a possible origin for the Origins player character) is perceived as another example of this. Due to being more popular than their elder sibling and heir-apparent, Trian, the Dwarf Noble was heavily pipped by the Assembly to be the child of King Endrin most likely to ascend to the throne of Orzammar after his death. Due to the machinations of their younger bother Bhelen however, the Dwarf Noble is either tricked into killing Trian directly or framed for his murder, earning them exile and certain death in the Deep Roads. Even after returning to Orzammar as a Grey Warden, the Dwarf Noble is derided as a kinslayer.
  • The Grey Wardens in Dragon Age: Inquisition. They were an order dedicated to protecting mankind from the Blight, but after saving the world in Origins they end up being manipulated by the Big Bad into practicing Blood Magic and playing right into his hands. After fighting your way through their stronghold you can have your Warden companion Blackwall talk sense into the survivors with a Rousing Speech, and after the fight you can choose whether to recruit them and give them the chance to atone or exile them back to their headquarters for their crimes.
• Garland from Final Fantasy is the top knight in Cornelia, but turns evil and kidnaps their princess.
• Crisis Core has Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth, the top-ranking SOLDIERs of Shinra who are famed and idolized worldwide. By the time the game is over all three of them have gone insane and betrayed the company, though Angeal's turn to darkness is a bit more complicated then Genesis or Sephiroth's.
• In Final Fantasy X, Seymour is a high-ranking Maester in the Church of Yevon, proposes to the main heroine and is polite and helpful. He's also totally insane, wants to kill everyone in Spira, and made his entire race Always Chaotic Evil. However, turns out all of Yevon's leaders are corrupt to some extent, as the Church of Yevon is a Path of Inspiration.
• In Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, Lightning gets back to Order's Sanctuary to report that Kain is going around killing his allies off, only to find out that the Warrior of Light not only is in on Kain's plan, he tries to finish Lightning off himself. Doubly effective since his fighting style actually is "Paragon". Subverted though in that he and Kain are Well Intentioned Extremists who believe they're doing the right thing, and after a What the Hell, Hero? speech for the two of them they come to their senses.
• The set-up for Halo 5: Guardians involves Master Chief and his Spartan Team going AWOL a personal mission against both the UNSC's and ONI's orders. ONI responds by declaring all of them traitors and sending Fireteam Osiris to arrest them. Downplayed though, as neither side is being particularly malicious (though ONI is, as usual, morally grey at best) and it's more that Chief doesn't trust anyone but himself to handle the Guardian threat especially since Cortana is behind it.
• In Injustice: Gods Among Us apparently Superman turning evil is the only thing it takes to make most significant DC heroes follow him; Batman being the only exception.
• In the Back Story of Knights of the Old Republic, Revan was an immensely gifted and charismatic Jedi, who (along with his sidekick Alek who would face the same fate) inspired a number of others to join him in fighting the Mandalorians against the wishes of the Jedi Council. That was still rebellious action for a good cause, but the next thing you know, he had turned to the Dark Side, reforming the Sith order and trying to take over the Republic.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, the Exile, a Magnetic Hero if ever there were one, can become a Sith Lord. Depending on the strength of her relationships, she will drag her companions' alignment down too.
  • The canonical light-sided Exile plays even more heavily with this trope. Despite breaking away from the Jedi to join Revan in fighting the Mandalorians and being responsible for ending the war by detonating a superweapon over Malachor V, they remained on the light-side and were the only one to return to face punishment from the Jedi Council after the end of the war. Furthermore, while the Exile accepted responsibility for disobeying the Council and being sentenced to exile, they refused to accept that they were wrong to stop the Mandalorians from taking over the galaxy and when asked to turn over their lightsaber, defiantly buried it into the stone in the middle of the Council Chambers before storming out.
  • This trope has been so common in the Republic's early history that the Disciple comments that the Jedi teachings must have some kind of fundamental flaw, because it keeps happening. Remember that this is barely half a century after Exar Kun's war.
• Mass Effect:
  • Saren Arterius in Mass Effect was considered one of the best Spectres before his Face–Heel Turn, and ends up dragging an asari Matriarch, her commando team, and a large collection of corporate assets and various mercenary bands with him to help an abusive precursor destroy galactic society. It also makes the Council and the other Spectres very reluctant to chase him down. At the same time, however, he was implied to have also been a terrible person (an ancillary book starring him and Captain Anderson supports this), as he was ruthless on the job, even fully willing to cause hundreds of deaths to get his target.
  • In Mass Effect 2, while Commander Shepard can still be the Paragon, during the two years they were dead, they were subject to a massive smear campaign by the Council. Without being able to count on any official support to thwart the Collector's attacks, Shepard is forced to work with Cerberus, which unfortunately only solidifies the growing belief that they've gone rogue.
  • Further compounded in the Arrival DLC, where Shepard is forced to detonate a mass relay and wipe out an inhabited star system to prevent the Reapers from gaining a beachhead. This leads to Shepard starting Mass Effect 3 in custody and about to be put on trial for war crimes against the batarians, when the Reapers finally invade Earth. Suffice to say, Shepard is quickly exonerated of their crimes and pressed back into service.
• This seems to be a running theme in the Mega Man meta-series:
  • The original series has Dr. Albert Wily, a genius roboticist. When the Robot University decided to fund Light's research and halt Wily's Double Gear project, he ended his friendship with Light and became the Big Bad of the original series. Appropriately enough, his own greatest creation in this series, Bass, rebels against him. Quite a bit, in fact.
  • Mega Man X has Sigma, once the greatest Maverick Hunter and protector of humanity. However, despite the atrocities he commits, his inclusion here is debatable; he's as much a victim of The Virus as a willful rebel. His Maverick Hunter X version plays this trope straight.
  • Commander Elpizo in Mega Man Zero 2 goes from being the champion of the free Reploids to opposing them when he becomes a Well-Intentioned Extremist out to utterly destroy Neo Arcadia and everyone in it.
• Big Boss of Metal Gear is the Deconstructor Fleet version of this and numerous other tropes. A few of the games' other antagonists probably count as well, at least the ones who weren't always acting as The Mole.
  • In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, this is one of the reasons CIA wants to snuff out The Boss. Actually subverted or even averted with herself, since her defection is means as duty for her homeland, and in the end, she died for her homeland.
• Metal Slug: General Morden, the Big Bad of the series, was once one of the Regular Army's finest commanders. Unfortunately, he ended up losing both his family and eye to a terrorist attack that could have been prevented were it not for corrupt elements within the Army. This greatly soured him into defecting from the army and forming the Rebel Army, taking several loyal troops with him.
• In Starcraft, Aldaris accuses Tassadar of being that. Of course, toward the end even he was forced to admit a mistake.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, this happens with Havoc Squad. It can also happen to Republic player characters who turn to the dark side.
  • Republic players on Nar Shaddaa are sent into Shadow Town, an Imperial prison for war criminals, to free a legendary Jedi by the name of Ako Domi. Guess what they find.
• In Sword and Fairy 7 one of antagonists, Kuiyu, used to be the leader of all New Deities, and when she went rogue and turned into a Demon, so did some of her subordinates. Eventually subverted, because, as it turns out, going rogue was the only way for her to save several children, who were sentenced to death by a high-ranking Knight Templar. Also, Demons are not that bad in the series, so the "turned into a Demon" part barely changed anything about her or her subordinates.
• Bian Zoldark from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, originally one of The Federation best researchers and leaders, went rogue along with many of their best pilots to form the Divine Crusaders and attempted a take-over. As it turns out though, he was actually more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist Anti-Villain who wanted to make sure Humanity had capable protectors against the Alien Invaders, whether it was his own team or anyone who managed to beat them. However, after he was killed by the Steel Dragon Battalion, most of his subordinates that don't join the Heroes suffer severe Motive Decay, forming the Neo-Divine Crusaders and later the Gaia Sabers and have remained a long-standing problem for the Heroes ever since.
• Garret from Thief was seen as the most promising Keeper acolyte of his generation. Naturally, he decided he'd rather use those skills for his own sake rather than the balance. Despite this he remains a (very reluctant) ally of the Keepers, which means they permit his freelance life because he keeps preserving the balance (unwillingly) at the cost of some nobles losing some gold every now and again. However, when interpreter Caduca is murdered in Deadly Shadows and Garret is pinned with the blame, the Keeper organisation essentially tears itself into pieces because so many within the organisation refuse to believe he did it. Ironically, he becomes the last true Keeper after he destroys Glyph magic.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Garrosh Hellscream was viewed as the epitome of what a true Orc warchief should be: Cunning, brutal, aggressive, but not needlessly cruel. He loved the Horde and hated their enemies, but over time he began to believe that the Horde's purpose had been corrupted by the other races and Thrall's peace-making. When he descended into villainy many Orcs followed because they believed he still embodied those traits they admired.
  • In the same universe, Arthas Menethil, former Prince of Lordaeron, fits this for the Alliance races. A handsome, charismatic, and well-spoken ruler who was an excellent warrior and leader to boot, Arthas had great things expected of him. However, the corruption of both the Scourge and the Burning Legion wore on his sanity until, in order to "save" his kingdom from the undead plague, he became the Lich King, resulting in the near-extinction of at least one race and the downfall of his kingdom, all of which is chronicled in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.
  • Sargeras was once the leader of the Pantheon before being corrupted by the Burning Legion and turning on all the worlds he once protected.