Twist Villain Cliche

The Disney’s 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 Disney Property
Hans (Frozen): The first Example of a Poor Twist Villan in a Disney Film as he turned from Normal Person to a Murder man in the Final 15 Minutes of the Movie.

Yokai A.K.A Robert Callaghan(Big Hero 6)ː Is basiclly the Same has Hans, Except his motivations make even less sence. There is an entire page about him on this wiki to read more about this guy. To learn more about him, Click Here.

Dawn Bellwether (Zootopia)ː While she has more clearer Motivations then Yokai, She is agruebly the worst Example of a Disney Twist Villain as she 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.

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.

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 matter worst, 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”

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 Does This Happen

 * 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 Dwarfs” which released in the 1930’s.  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 cliche 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 Cliche Sucks

 * 1)  The cliche 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) 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.
 * 5) 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.
 * 6) 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.
 * 7) The films, games, and shows that use this cliche 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.

Redeeming Qualites

 * 1) The twist in of 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 facade.  You cant 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 in a must Red y, 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 villan, 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.

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.

Videos
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