Twist Villain Cliche

The Twist Villain Cliche is a cliche that occurs when a character who although seemingly kind and innocent at first, shockingly reveals their true colors as the antagonist. This particular cliche is named after Disney, whom has been using this cliche in their movies and television shows frequently since the 2010’s. The cliche is seen as problematic due to its tendency to make stories feel predictable and uninspired as well as being capable of inflicting severe damage towards the character involved and their reputation towards fans and viewers.

Examples Of The Twist Used Poorly in Animated Disney Properties

 * Hans (Frozen): The first example of a Poor Twist Villain in a Disney film, as he turned from a normal person to a murderer in the final 15 minutes of the movie.
 * Yokai A.K.A Robert Callaghan (Big Hero 6)ː Basically the same as Hans, except his motivations make even less sense.
 * Dawn Bellwether (Zootopia)ː While she has clearer motivations than Yokai, she is arguably the worst example of a Disney Twist Villain as there are no signs of her hating her job and she turns Evil only in the last 10 minutes of the movie.
 * Evelyn Deavor (The Incredibles 2): Her true identity as The Screenslaver was very obvious due to her vague motivations to helping Elastigirl promote superheroes. Her dead giveaways range from frequently giving weird, evil looking faces and drinking wine often.  Her name is pronounced the same way as the words "Evil Endeavor"
 * King Andrias Leviathan (Amphibia): Andrias as a villain was excessively foreshadowed by the show with blatant indications such as kneeling down to a sinister entity, moving a piece with Anne on it on a chessboard, and being overly interested in The Calamity Box. Viewers have made many speculations about him since his first appearance and his betrayal of the girls was spoiled out by the season 2 finale’s episode name “True Colors”.
 * Rhombulus (Star Vs The Forces Of Evil): Throughout his appearances in season 2, he was depicted as an impulsive but well meaning guy with a childish attitude but his personality did come across as truly genuine. In the last two seasons though, he was derailed and flanderized into becoming a bigoted and prejudiced sociopath who hates monsters with his behavior coming to a head in “Cornonation” where it is revealed to have freed Globgor. He then makes a scheme that puts lives in danger and celebrates with a pizza party.

Other Films

 * Tentacular (Rumble): This character had this cliche fall on him twice with the first occurrence happening too early on in the film during the beginning of its first act. It is obvious that he was the villain due to having the appearance of a shark and showing his self absorbed behavior too early on with him hogging a selfie from a blimp from another monster reporter before his announcement that he is moving from Stoker to Slitherpoole.  The film then advertised that Jimothy Brett Charley III was going to be the main villain only for Tentacular to be revealed that he was the one who orchestras the tear down of stoker stadium.  The second occurance of this twist only seems to exist to shoehorn Tentacular into the role of main antagonist and make Jimothy forgotten in the film.  The revelation of Tentacular as the villain derails the plot of the film and makes it completely unfaithful to its source material of the book Monster On The Hill. Even more insulting is  that the trailers for the film promised that Tentacular was going to get a backstory, only for it to reveal Winnie and Steve’s backstories instead, which counts as false advertising.  Even worse is that Tentacular has a more heroic counterpart from the source material, which tarnished the reputation of both incarnations.
 * Quentin Beck (Spider Man: Far From Home): Quentin’s identity as Mysterio is a dead giveaway that he is going to be the villain of the film given that Mysterio has been depicted as a villain in countless marvel comics, shows, and video games. His lie about the multiverse is also very obvious given that Mysterio has the power to create illusions.
 * Wanda Maximoff A.K.A Scarlett Witch (Dr. Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness): Turns from a hero who cares about protecting lives to a selfish woman who wreaks havoc on the multiverse. Even though the MCU did try to explain Wanda’s eventual descent into madness through The Avengers Films and the Disney+ miniseries Wandavision, she still seemed to kept hold onto her sense of morality.  Unfortunately she suddenly flies off the handle after Wandavision.
 * Smiler (The Emoji Movie): The film’s sense of morality is not only all over the place but completely broken. Part of its infamy lies in its representation of heroes and villains.  It is made obvious that Smiler is going to be an antagonist mainly due to having an unappealing character design that makes her look like a freak as she smiles all the time.
 * Professor Rupert Marmalade IV (The Bad Guys): As the film focuses on bad guys turning good, it also blatantly features a supposed good guy being revealed evil all along. Rupert gives off so many red flags of being the villain such as acting egotistical, snarky, and condescending towards the bad guys he is supposedly reforming, despite the fact that he makes his big reveal well before the third act.
 * Enik (Land Of The Lost 2009): One of the biggest deviations this film makes from the TV show it is based on is that it turns Enik from a hero who is a bit of a jerk to a genocidal deceptive villain. The film makes it easy to depict Enik as a villain due to him being a Sleeslak, which are a race of reptoids that have proven themselves to be nothing but hostile to the heroes.
 * Scrappy Doo (Scooby Doo 2002): The film portrays Scrappy Doo as the mastermind behind the events with Emile Mondavarious being his robot dummy. This reveal is particuarly egregious, as Scrappy only appeared in one scene and was shown to be horribly out of character. This is a dig at how disliked he was by the fandom.
 * Dorian Gray (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen): The film changes the traitor in the comics from the Invisible Man to Dorian Gray, who wasn't a member in the original comics, possibly due to rights issues with the estate of H.G. Wells.

Live Action TV

 * Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones): Even though the show focuses on morally gray characters with most of the heroes doing some questionable things, Daenerys was initially depicted as the oddball of the Targaryen family who wanted to free slaves and take back what was rightfully hers. However, the writers ran out of source material due to author George RR Martin taking too long to write the last two books for the series the show is based on and even though the show does try to foreshadow Daenerys’ descent into madness, she flies off the deep end in the episode “The Bells” when she torches King’s landing with a dragon and shows no remorse over it.

Western Animation Television

 * Roger Smith (American Dad!): One of the plot lines the show commonly uses is that one of the members of the Smith Family, usually Stan or Steve often come up with an idea and have Roger participate in it, only for Roger to find some way to double cross them and use their ideas for his benefit. To make matters worse, the show does not waste any time in depicting Roger as a despicable sociopath and making him obvious due to him being an alien. This kind of plotline has been used so frequently that Roger’s villainy stops being a twist altogether.
 * Ash Graven (Final Space): Although this show tried to foreshadow Ash’s turn to becoming a servant of Invictus in season 3 by killing off her adoptive brother Fox and having Gary be involved in this, she seemed to reconcile with Gary in the episode “Forgiveness” and be able to undergo healing through a relationship with Evra. However she fully turns evil by kidnapping Little Cato after overhearing a conversation between Gary and Avocato about Little Cato’s parents and how they died at Avocato’s hands, realizing that they were the monarchs of Ventrexia.  However this does not make much sense due to her aforementioned reconciliation with Gary and the fact that she was present when Avocato confessed to killing Ventrexia’s king and queen in “The Ventrexian”
 * Courtney (Total Drama): Originally in her appearance as a contestant in the first season, she is depicted as a law-abiding, well-mannered girl who follows the rules of the show and acts like a fair leader of the Killer Bass. However, her personality becomes very chaotic after her elimination as she resorts to trying to kill contestants with a hot air balloon in the island special to win a million dollars and cheats by suing her way into Total Drama Action and getting Owen unfairly eliminated. She also becomes very bossy and mean towards other contestants as well as very vindictive towards Gwen in World Tour and All Stars after Duncan dumps her for Gwen.
 * Dave (Total Drama): In Pahkitew Island, he is depicted as a jittery but level headed boy who tries his hardest to be the leader of Team Maskwak, but after becoming infatuated with Sky, he becomes an obsessive wimp towards her, leading to his elimination. However, he suddenly becomes evil in the finale when he finds out that Sky already has a boyfriend, leading him to try to kill her and Shawn so he could win $500,000.

Video Games

 * Chef Saltbaker (Cuphead): In the game's DLC, The Delicious Last Course, Saltbaker directs Cuphead, Mugman, and Ms. Chalice to find ingredients to make the wonder tart, which grants those who eat it life. However his ulterior motives and villainy are not foreshadowed and his status as the main antagonist is only revealed after the DLC bosses are all defeated and only right before the boss battle against him.

Why This Happens

 * 1) Disney was known for making villains that were obvious and evil from the get-go since they first emerged as a company.  They had been doing this ever since Snow White and the Seven Dwarves which released in the 1930s. Since then, people have been complaining that the obvious villains have become cliched and stale.
 * 2) The writers mainly do this to pass their works off as good writing, with the mindset that by writing characters more realistically, they would appease modern audiences.  This includes designing villains in ways they would not be normally designed.
 * 3) The moral these forms of media that use this cliché often try to teach kids is to be careful who to trust and to never trust strangers who do seem nice to them at first.  This comes across as parents and moral guardians trying to persuade studios to teach children good morals to stay away from danger.

Why This Cliché Sucks

 * 1)  The cliché, when used on a character, has the massive risk of undoing everything the character was originally depicted as, taking away their original apparent identity and forcing viewers to suddenly get accustomed to the character’s true colors.
 * 2) When used improperly on the character, it can forcefully strip away all of the redeeming qualities of a character for the sake of a shocking twist and turn them into a one note villain.  It can also cause the character to undergo severe character derailment and/or flanderization.
 * 3) When the twist is excessively foreshadowed, it stops being a twist altogether and becomes something fans would expect making the whole plot predictable in the process.
 * 4) This cliché often exists just to force the other obvious villains into often half-baked redemptions. While this can be facilitated to make them go through character development, the villains that often go through this often try to warn the hero of the twist villain’s intentions with them being dismissed just so the twist villain can go through with their plans and prolong the plot.  Many of these villains also have their motivations be just to try to stop the twist villain but often warn the heroes at the last minute.  This makes their actions come off as abrasive and makes them jerks due to not thinking of a better solution to make the heroes trust them.
 * 5) The cliché is often accompanied by the “red herring villain” cliché, which is when a character, usually one from a movie, gets painted as the villain blatantly by the story, only for that character to serve as a bait and switch for the true villain.  This makes the red herring villain look more like a butt-monkey that serves to be abused by the story through being falsely accused.
 * 6) On the other hand when the twist has no foreshadowing and comes out of nowhere, it can result in character assassination for the character who falls victim to it. It also comes across as insulting towards fans of that character.
 * 7) It often makes the heroes and good characters who are duped by the villain look like major idiots when the villain has obvious red flags given off frequently. It goes to show that the heroes have a horrible judge of character.
 * 8) When the character affected tries to explain their motivations for being a twist villain, it often comes across as very sloppy, rushed, nonsensical, and hard to understand, which is mainly due to these characters being revealed as the villain at the last possible minute.
 * 9) When it is done in an adaptation on a character who has a counterpart from that adaptation who is portrayed as a hero throughout,  the cliche becomes nothing but an insult towards the original counterpart and it damages the reputation of both the twist villain and the heroic counterpart that villain is based on.  It also shows that the adaptation is unfaithful and disrespectful towards it’s source material.
 * 10) The films, games, and shows that use this cliché go out of their way to point out that these kinds of villains are the worst and most irredeemable villains in existence as these characters. Who were originally depicted as nice people, are then shown to be depraved, selfish, arrogant, and unapologetic sociopaths.
 * 11) Even though the writers try to do this to make a villain more realistic and three- dimensional, this often does not work and instead not only makes the villain one dimensional but also have way less dimension than the obvious villains.  This can also cause some of these villains to turn into Generic Doomsday Villains.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The twist itself is not inherently bad and can make a story compelling if written and executed properly.
 * 2) The twist villain can be used effectively in genres such as the mystery genre.
 * 3) Some twist villains are actually decent at best.

How To Make An Effective Twist Villain

 * 1) First, recognize whether your story needs a villain or not. Sometimes stories do not need an actual villain as internal conflicts within people like families can suffice well enough
 * 2) Secondly, think about whether your villain should actually be a twist villain or not.  Recognize the significance of the villain in relation to the plot and its structure.
 * 3) For foreshadowing, make sure you don’t make your twist villain reveal their true colors out of nowhere with little to no foreshadowing.  At the same time, make sure you don’t foreshadow your villain too much and don’t make your foreshadowing too obvious for people to notice.
 * 4) Give your twist villain understandable motivation for their actions and their initial façade. You can't have your twist villain initially be nice to people out of nowhere.  For reasons, make sure your villain has reasons for working in the shadows, such as lack of trust to others or being shunned by people or society.
 * 5) Recognize the genre you are using for your twist villain. If it is of the mystery genre, then it will be easier to incorporate a twist villain in it. Just make sure your twist villain is as suspicious as everyone else in the crime. Even so, do not make your clues too obvious. Make sure the clues all line up correctly with proper pacing.
 * 6) Do not reveal your twist villain at the last minute. Doing so will result in rushed pacing for the villain and mangle up their character development and motivations.  If you plan to do the reveal for your villain, make sure it is done earlier but not at the beginning.
 * 7) Make sure your twist villain does not give any obvious red flags in their appearance and mannerisms. Their design should not follow the cliches of other villain designs such as wearing dark clothing, looking like a beast or a demon, and not making suspicious looking faces a lot.
 * 8) The twist villain must blend in seamlessly with the plot and not cause contradictions. Anything in the plot that contradicts the villain such as an unusual change in the villain’s behavior in a scene or an action a villain does that contradicts their overall morality will result in plot holes.

Anime

 * Vinegar Doppio A.K.A Diavolo (JOJO's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind): Vinegar seemed to be a kind person at first but while he is revealed to be a villain, the twist is that he is actually two villains in one with one of them worse than the other. As it turns out, Vinegar suffered from multiple personality disorder with his alternate self, Diavolo running the Passions Mafia on his own accord.  Their behaviors are so distinctive that they are both regarded as two entirely separate individuals even though they both possess the same body as Diavolo preferred to work in the shadows and keep his identity fully secret. His twist villainy is even played with after his kills Jean Pierre Polnareff, as it results in him and the other heroes accidentally switching bodies, which lasted for a while and kept people guessing.

Film

 * Henry J. Waternoose (Monsters Inc): He revealed himself as the main villain shortly before banishing Mike and Sully in the second act. However his personality remained consistent and his motivations had him actually care for the community as he feared an energy crisis. It is just that he refused to listen to Mike and Sully about their solution to the problem.
 * Turbo A.K.A King Candy (Wreck It Ralph): Both of them are shown to obviously be villains with Turbo abandoning his game for his own benefit and destroying that game and another in the process and King Candy acted like a tyrant in Sugar Rush towards racers like Vannellope.  However the twist these villains have is that they are both one and the same person. Turbo as it turns out took on the identity of King Candy as an alias.
 * Coco LaBouche (Rugrats In Paris The Movie): For a film based on a slice of life cartoon, it manages to create a compelling villain in the form of a corrupt CEO who strays away from the cliched businessman trope. Coco had plenty of time for viewers to be accustomed to her and get used to her irritable behavior but she was not revealed to be the villain until she lies to her boss to get a promotion and schemes to marry Chas Finster to cover it up.  Her scheme get much more aggressive over time naturally.
 * Alec Trevelyan (Goldeneye): He's introduced in the pre-titles sequence as James Bond's best friend and fellow MI6 agent, only to be shockingly killed off. He is revealed to be the main villain in a genuinely shocking twist. The fact that he was Bond's friend makes his betrayal worse.
 * Elektra King (The World is Not Enough): She's initially thought to be an innocent victim of the terrorist Renard (who we're led to believe is the main villain), only to be a diabolical mastermind. There are subtle hints and Bond is shown to have doubts about her innocence. She is often regarded as one of the best James Bond villains.
 * Miranda Frost (Die Another Day): Introduced as Gustav Graves' publicist, she turns out to be an MI6 agent, who was actually in Graves' pocket the whole time.
 * Major Grant (Die Hard 2: Die Harder): He's initially shown as an antagonistic authority figure to John McClane, only to warm to him, only to be a traitor.
 * Scud (Blade II): He's Blade's comic relief sidekick who butts heads with Whistler, but later bonds with him. It turns out he was working for the vampires all along, but Blade knew this anyway and kills him in a gruesome manner with Reinhardt's bomb.
 * Henri Ducard (Batman Begins): He's Bruce Wayne's mentor and a mouthpiece for Ra's al Ghul. It turns out that is the real Ra's al Ghul and the one we saw was a decoy.
 * Miranda Tate/Talia al Ghul (The Dark Knight Rises): She's a potential new love interest for Bruce Wayne, only to be revealed as the daughter of Ra's al Ghul. It turns out she was the one who escaped from the pit and not Bane.
 * Ash (Alien): The calm, mild-mannered science officer turns out to be an android working for Weyland-Yutani to ensure the survival of the xenomorph at the expense of the crew.
 * Carter Burke (Aliens): On the surface, he appears to be a reasonable, easy-going bureaucrat sympathetic to Ripley. His true colours are revealed over the course of the film, as he's more concerned with profits and losses than people and was responsible for the deaths of the colonists in the first place. Then he deliberately endangers everyone to bring back facehuggers for Weyland-Yutani.
 * Sgt. Frank Butterman (Hot Fuzz): The jovial, grandfatherly police sergeant turns out to be behind the NWA's murders in Sanford purely to make sure it's awarded Village of the Year.
 * Dr. Elsa Schneider (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade): She appears to be Indy's love interest, but is a spy for the Nazis helping them find the Holy Grail (though she doesn't share their ideals).
 * Obadiah Stane (Iron Man): Tony Stark's mentor and father-figure turns out to have orchestrated his kidnapping in the first place and was also secretly selling his weapons to terrorists.
 * Dr. Aldrich Killian (Iron Man 3): At first, we're led to believe that The Mandarin is the main villain. It turns out that the Mandarin was a puppet for a rival businessman who wants revenge against Tony Stark.
 * Ego (Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2): Peter Quill's laid-back fun-loving father is revealed to have killed Peter's mother by giving her a brain tumour and wants Peter to join him in ruling the galaxy.
 * Stinky Pete (Toy Story 2): He appears to be a kindly grandfather-type, but sabotages Woody's attempt to escape Al's apartment so he can go on display in Japan.
 * Lotso Hugging Bear (Toy Story 3): What appears to be a kind-hearted character appears to be a ruthless monster who rules the daycare centre with an iron fist.
 * Roger "Verbal" Kint (The Usual Suspects): In one of the greatest twist endings in film history, the crippled con man telling the story about the elusive gangster Keyser Soze turns out to be Soze himself and he was just biding his time.

Live Action TV

 * Agatha Harkness (WandaVision): Wanda's friendly neighbour is revealed to be a villain from Marvel Comics. She even gets a whole a song about how she was evil all along.

Video Games

 * Lance Vance (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City): He serves as Tommy Vercetti's ally and partner, but grows to resent Tommy not giving him any respect and sells him out to Sonny Forrelli.
 * Big Smoke and Ryder (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas): CJ's childhood friends turn out to be working with the rival Ballas gang and had a hand in the death of CJ's mother. While Ryder is antagonistic towards CJ, Big Smoke is friendly and accomodating, which makes the latter's betrayal a shock.
 * Narrator/Max's Superego (Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse): The Superego is the part of the brain in charge of higher thought, so with a character like Max, somebody who's never had a single complex thought in his life, it's easy to see why his Superego is angry. As time went by, nothing he could do had any impact on Max. When Max finally thinks about someone other than himself for once in his life and urges Sam to save a pregnant Sybil, Max's Superego finally realises that he's worth saving after all. He tells everyone to get out as he cuts the tumour himself, dying in the process.

Subversions
These include characters that managed to avoid the cliches of the twist villain with clever writing even though it seemed they would go that path at first.

Western Animation

 * Bolo (Final Space): He is a god like alien from a species called the titans, whom were corrupted by an evil being named Invictus.  While Bolo’s creator’s The Arachnitects called Bolo a “cool dude”, fans were speculative about Bolo’s morality due to the fact that he is a Titan and has the appearance of a demon. This seems to have been confirmed in “Descent Into Darkness” when Gary’s mother, Sheryl claims that Bolo is a sociopathic being seeking to destroy the universe and that she got that information from a titan named Oreskis. However the next episode assures Bolo as a hero with him confirming that what Oreskis claimed was nothing but a vicious lie.
 * Cassandra De Rolo (The Legend Of Vox Machina): As the sister of Percy De Rolo, she suffered immensely under the tyrannical rule of the Briarwoods as she was made to support their rule. She however said that she had been playing the role of double agent to help the Whitestone resistance. In “Depths of Deciet” she seemingly betrays Percy and Vox Machina by leaving them to die in an acid trap and claiming that she supports the Briarwoods. The next episode though reveals that she did those things while under mind control by Sylas Briarwood as she comes to her senses after Sylas is defeated and killed by Keyleth and Grog.

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