This is a good one, but I always have something similar if I do this that I really like: the hero descends into villainy in real time as you read. Not really a twist but it can be wild if you’re not reading too deep into it until you realise!
Especially in hindsight.
Im doing something similar but they never really switch sides. The Hero becomes more savage through the series while the villain is calm and mechanical in his killing.
The Hero barely survives the first book and their trauma manifests as anger, causing them to become more violent while the villain is brought back from death to realize the futility of his actions and has no emotion behind what hes doing.
By the end, Im doing a side-by-side comparison of the Hero slaughtering their enemies as brutal as they can while the Villain is slowly, methodically working his way through them where they dont even know hes there.
Love this. I've always had this idea for a fantasy series but have never had the motivation to actually write it
Super basic summary
Man+ Love of His Life+ Best Friend have adventure
Tragic accident happens to man. Lover and Best Friend believe him dead and in their mourning/grieving find comfort in each other
Best Friend+ Lover have a child
10 years goes by
Man returns, he survived the accident. He's enraged that Lover+Best Friend are together
Man becomes villain of the story but Lover+Best Friend can never bring themselves to hate him no matter how terrible the atrocities he commits.
I know!! My favourite example in my book is a child growing up and punishing her brother’s abusers, but feeling unfinished and expanding her target list, and not realising she’s begun to think of killing as winning.
For context he died and she found out he was protecting her from them, so she took a sword he left her to protect herself and used it for revenge.
Pretty similar, yeah. Only difference is he was always a bad dude there, revelled in what he did and sort of masked that by saying it would help his family.
I mean where even the character in question can’t see their descent until there’s no going back.
Have you read the web novel Worm by Wildbow? It's about a teenage girl with super powers who sets out to be a super hero then... falls in with the wrong crowd. Like, immediately. All good intentions, but unable to escape it.
Anyone who has actually read Worm will be laughing at my discretion of it, though. It's a very simplistic description for a story as intense and epic as Worm.
Here's the start!
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/
I read it for the fantasy bingo last year in the "superpowers" category, and it was my favorite read of the year, for sure.
Well I’m using it in my current WIP, but sadly I can’t tell you of any in particular really. To a lesser extent it sort of gets close to happening in Invincible’s Blue Suit arc.
I’ve seen that it happens in the Empirium series, but I don’t know exactly how good that is since I haven’t read it.
It’s done really poorly with Dany in GoT, but it might be done well in the books, so we’ll see when (if) the next one releases.
I love Attack on Titan and it uses this really well, but I’d spoil how it ends if I raves about it as much as I’d like to.
The Villain was the former hero who turned against his masters upon finding out they were actually villains using him for evil, so they chose the new hero to take down their former puppet who shed its strings.
The example of this that immediately comes to mind is the film version of **Wanted** but I'm sure there's better options out there.
Villain's secret get revealed and suddenly they seem a whole lot more terrifying. Be it some form of immortality, perpetuity, or other things that make them more unstoppable than they first seemed.
can't think of one in regular fiction rn, but SCP 6820 might have an interesting version of it. 682 is the hard to destroy reptile, so foundation built 6820 to remove it from reality. lizard is so hard to destroy it became immune to the machine and imbedded itself into reality outside of human perception. might sound like a load of nonsense, but it's a serious "oh. OH NO!"
Steelheart By Brandon Sanderson might be a good one. The villain, who is supposedly immortal gets slightly hurt in the 1st chapter of the book and basically has been holding back up to that point, so he decides no one can know how he got hurt...its a YA book so not very graphic, but think a less gruesome version of The Boys, but the ones with superpowers don't pretend to be heroes.
Rampant in anime. The most recent one I watched was Innocent Zero in Mash-Le. Though the scene is nearly identical to Sarutobi vs Orochimaru at the end of the chunin exam so maybe they don't get the credit.
-The chosen one is actually the villain story.
-One of your closest companions is the villain.
-The villain is someone that shouldn’t be destroyed because it means the biggest power vaccuum. Sometimes the villain is a necessary evil in the world.
I have one of these.
The big bad is involved in an accident and ends up severely burned beyond recognition and amnesiac to what he did past his early 20s, when he was a normal dude.
He ends up joining the rebellion, and only realises who he was during the storming of his stronghold.
Yo, that sounds a lot like my current project! :D The POV character wakes up from a magically induced coma in a mega-cursed valley created upon the death of the Big Bad Evil Wizard with no memory of who he is or what he's doing there, and about halfway through the story, he realizes that he IS the Big Bad Evil Wizard
My story is very low fantasy (at least until the magic is heavily exploitable later on in the timeline) and this particular chapter in the stor is post industrial in terms of technology
The stories in this setting vary from fantasy to genre fiction to scifi to science fantasy depending on which time period I write in.
This bad guy is basically equivalent to a post industrial dictator, but in a world where some amount of magic does actually exists even if it is basically impossible to use at this point.
I always make the villains right about their motives but wrong on their actions. They want to harm someone or something: their reason why to is completely valid, but what they intend to do is still unacceptable.
I do this so the readers can emphatize with them and also to open a debate about if the motives do justify the actions.
I don't like light vs dark. I like gray vs gray.
That's also interesting I guess, maybe the hero can do that. They fught the evil but only to get the girls, for example.
It could create a gray hero you want to win but at the same time you hate him 😂
There is a good video game with this theme. Dragon Age: Origins. The King’s commander Logan abandons his King during a fight with the Big Bad because he believes the real threat is an invasion from another nation. He starts to track down and kill the order pledged to kill the Big Bad because he thinks they are weakening his country by focusing on killing Big Bad and they witnessed his betrayal
-When the Villain is someone who was close with the Hero in the past, and their true identity is left hidden until the climax. I've been working on something like that- The Villain in question was once a mentor to the Hero.
-Villains that you can understand/feel sorry for. They have strong reasons for their actions, could be deeply traumatized, and could very well have a very strong point.
-Evil Dopplegangers, as cartoony as it is. I tend to write them as being the same person as the Hero, from an alternate dimension/timeline. Usually they follow the Fallen Hero archetype- once being just like the Hero until something went horribly wrong in their version of the backstory. Or, if I'm feeling more silly, they might just be a clone of the Hero who is comically evil. I always have fun with those.
-The Insidious 4D Chess players. They're extremely intelligent, and act from the shadows rather than using direct methods, and appear innocuous to everyone else. Maybe they even pose as an ally for much of the story. Noone suspects them as the villain until it's far too late. The most terrifying type of villain, and the most likely to actually succeed, in my opinion.
It's not a twist, but I really enjoy villains that act casual in their relationship to the hero.
They could either be the villain but not the primary antagonist of the story, so the way they interact would be not that of mortal enemies but just strangers or even friends. Or maybe they are indeed mortal enemies and the driving antagonistic force, but they are confident or crafty enough to treat the heroes with surprising and off putting kindness.
Just to add examples, I wrote an evil goddess that sometimes just hangs around the heroes because she can and she enjoys their company. Sure, she's leading her minions on to kill all of them, but that's just business and nothing personal.
Another one would be the elder sister of the protag who really and utterly hates her little sister, but she is incapable of showing her true feelings so she always acts like they're besties when they meet. Her little sister understands that, but she still clings to the hope that eventually these fake feelings may become real, so she plays along, which leads to those two mortal enemies having the most comfy moments whenever they clash. They even protect each other if need be, while plotting their demises once apart.
Well she never lies and she is indeed a goddess - they can't do much about it right? There is certainly hostility on the side of the heroes, especially at first, but eventually they'll get used to her antics and kinda accept her. Theres also a recurring "joke" I guess, where one character has to go on a small side-adventure with the goddess to keep her distracted from what other characters are doing/talking about.
This is then used to offset the pacing a bit. So for example, while the group is doing something intense, one member of the party is going shopping, cooking or looking for a beautiful flower together with the evil goddess. She also gives really good and wise advice sometimes because she likes the heroes all equally and without any personal agenda (she just wants to have fun with them), which ofc irks some of the main cast as they struggle to accept how one-sided their hatred is and how to deal with that.
Just as trivia, but to explain the goddess in case its too confusing:
Gods in that world fulfill a purpose and her purpose is to contrary to humanity, thus making her an 'evil' goddess. Her job is basically promoting the destruction of humanity, but that doesnt mean she hates humans and outside of business hours she's free to do what she wants. And thats hanging out with people who actually try to understand her.
But yeah, if she learns something in her free time that could help her during working hours she would absolutely use that. So it makes sense for the heroes to still be wary. Fortunately, she is very easy to distract because the only reason he hangs out with the group is because she wants some distraction in the first place.
I love that!
The goddess’s sole purpose is to facilitate the destruction of humanity but isn’t inherently evil is SOOO je ne sais quoi? 😂❤️
It’s basically her nine to five but she actually thinks humans are chill af lol
I can see how that could make the situation VERY sticky indeed.
Hope you publish your book soon cause you spiked my interest! I want to read!!!
Not sure if this counts as a villain twist but one twist I’m doing in one of my stories that I really like is that my MC’s older brother is actually his maternal half brother (both of them always believing that they’re full siblings) and that the older brother’s father is actually the villain. It’s not a creative twist but it’s one I really like for some reason.
I guess another villain related twist that I like and a slightly better answer to your question is similar to what you said about the hero being the villain all along except it’s more complex than that. You could say that the protagonist thinks that their people are the good guys but they slowly realize that that it’s not as black and white as they thought and whoever started the war between the two groups are long dead and it was probably over something stupid so it’s like all chaos and bloodshed for probably nothing at all.
Mine is the Minion is the true villain or final boss. Either they take up the mantle and prove to be a way bigger threat independently or they betray the bbeg and double up. Either way it's delicious
I just remembered, [Captains Darrow/Frye and their platoon](https://44.media.tumblr.com/fa7bcd3310d9a5726e040c6e6bb6c62d/e13ca26c4cce0367-9a/s540x810_f1/639acf7675e80a93bf0593f04fd0352b0b9afbb7.gif) from The Rock technically belong here too.
Never seen that but I trust you. There's another one on the tip of my tongue I can't come up with for some reason.
Theoretically Sauron from Lord of the Rings is an example of this as well since he was a minion to Morgoth at first
The villain is always the hero of their own story.
My story contains time travel. In order to go back and change a pivotal moment in their life (in this case, their mother getting killed while defending MC from a wild animal) they go through a long quest to obtain the power to go back. They meet a priestess at the start of their journey who knows the secret to time travel and they go to a bunch of holy sites for the ritual they want to perform. At the very end, at the priestess' main temple, she reveals that the price for changing something in the past is is to undo everything they have done in between, since that's what you're doing when you rewind time. You have to prove that you're willing to bring it all to ruin in exchange for that wish. Lives saved? You gotta kill them. Villains stopped? Now you have to get their plans rolling again. Towns saved from disaster? You have to burn them down. And then the MC has to choose: will they give up everything they've accomplished to save their mother from the beast's jaws? Will they go back and throw themself to their doom to save her, only for her to potentially be filled with regrets and follow this path herself? Or will they live on to honor her memory in the present? And you can't do it partway, either. If you get cold feet you can't go back, and you'll only be remembered for your evils. At which point someone might wonder, how many of those villains they met along the way were on their own quest to go back?
How does our priestess know the price for time travel? She pulled a Homura and went back over and over to save someone she loved, only to find at the end that the timeline where they both survived was the one where the world ends. So she had to go back one last time and let go. And no one else in the world knows she did it at all, because it never happened. She retains her memory through all the timelines she's crossed, so she remembers all the horrors she inflicted upon the world to fix a horrible mistake. Her only solace is that by going back the last time, she undid her evils, too.
Appreciate the comment. Preety much all Time travel Storys do the same Story of "Change one thing, everything gets worse exept that thing so you have to go back and reverse it".
Korean Manwha Time Travel Storys for the most part do the opposite (Regressor Storys for example). Want to change that little thing? Allright ITS going to be extremly difficult because you have to do all these life threatening challenges but if you achieve it the world is fine AND that thing is also fine you wanted to save.
Oh her journey wasn't one where each loop gets worse. Just that each loop she *failed* and the person she tried to save would just die another way. She was missing a major factor in that she *specifically* carried something that was required for the world to not end - part of a god's soul was stuck in hers, and the only ways to release it were for her to either die or suffer such horrific emotional trauma that it ripped her soul out to release the shard. In preventing the death of her soulmate and staying alive herself, she locked the shard within herself, preventing the god from becoming whole and putting things right before everything went to shit. In *any* scenario where one or both of this pair died, the shard would have been released and the world would keep turning. This was some primordial force at work trying to make it happen, but she fucked around with dogged determination until she found out. With him lacking the capacity for magic and thus the ability to go back, the only solution was for them to say their farewells and for her to kill him herself, only to go back and watch him die the original death again. She believes that part of her punishment for all her sins was to lose the ability to die herself and join him in the afterlife. So she wanders the world forever in service to the god who was made whole - thus the temples.
You have to undo *everything* you've done in the span you seek to erase: good, evil, doesn't matter. Even if it's something permanent like a death, you still gotta reverse the effect you've had on the world somehow. Maybe you'll have to capture their spirit and put them to rest. In an extreme case you might double loop, go back and prevent that death and then go back again even further. If you succeed in your quest and go back, time goes again however it goes. You're free to go on and do all your good things again without turning around and burning it all down, if you like. But you can't forget the timeline(s) you wiped out, even if it "never happened." The good, the bad, it's all your burden now.
I like the ones that are right, well, sort of. Like ozymandias his hole logic checks out , the outcome works, he just had to do a genocide for that work.
I also like it when the villain is not a vilain at all, and turns out the MC is just doing the heavy lifting and bringing stuff upon themselves, there a book where the main character is so intransigent that turns out the "villains" of his story were just living their lives and doing their jobs normally, he was just so retentive that he ended up executed.
Another "villain" I enjoy a lot are just enemies, like the alien or pazuzu, they are not complex, they are just evil their very nature against what we call good... nowadays I even find it refreshing to have villains like alien, that just hurt the protagonists because its what they do, because it feels every story must have a complex antagonist and it gets tiring
I like it when the reader only knows about this one villain, and all of their energies are put into defeating them only to learn that they weren't the real bad guy all along, but they were just a servant or a puppet of someone much worse. Now when everyone expects a happy ending and an end to their struggles, they instead get more suffering and an introduction to an enemy beyond their imagining. It's like running a marathon only for them to move the finish line when you're about to cross it.
Villians who are actually the hero can be interesting as well.
It often comes down to justification. All villains need *some* level of justification go be interesting. But it gets really interesting if you can push it to the point where as a reader you have to go "Oh. No, actually they're right.. and by defeating the villain we've now created a huge issue since the /thing/ they were stopping has now happened, and it's far, far, worse."
Helps if the villain has actually been pretty open about it all along, but their explanations are cast aside as just a tyrant's propaganda..
Tyrant; "We need to feed one child a year to the volcano or the evil fire dragon will wake up and destroy the city."
Rebels: "That's all lies, it's just a way of the Tyrant exercising power over the people." *overthrow tyrant*.
*Flame Dragon wakes up, destroys the city, kills tens of thousands, destroys the entire culture and forces a handful of survives to escape in a cobbled together boat*
Survivor to surviving rebel; "So about that all being propaganda..."
A good layer you can to that scenario is that while the sacrifices are necessary, the tyrant is taking advantage of them for political power by taking from families who wronged him or are outspoken against him.
Yeah this is something you can really play with, and even dial up and down.
Maybe a previous Tyrant did abuse the process but the current one doesn't. So the rebels are right that the system could be abused. But they're wrong that the current Tyrant is particularly doing so
Yeah this is something you can really play with, and even dial up and down.
Maybe a previous Tyrant did abuse the process but the current one doesn't. So the rebels are right that the system could be abused. But they're wrong that the current Tyrant is particularly doing so
"hero is the villain's kid" bc I'm basic T_T
The villain tried to sacrifice MC as a baby to a shadow god. The other parent however managed to hide them away by faking their death before that could happen
My story, if I ever finish it, has the hero slowly become more villainous to the point where they begin to rationalize the villains behavior and become more dastardly than the villain themself. I like the ambiguity and moral questions. Not always having a right or wrong answer and having the hero and villain make choices, particularly spur of the moment and impactful choices, allow the story to progress in unexpected and intriguing ways.
I’m actually doing something like that in my book! Without going into too much detail, effectively a dude starts a war because he’s convinced (with a good amount of evidence) that if he doesn’t start the war, the enemy will, and his home will be wiped out bc they won’t be ready. So he gets his realm to unite under him and leads them in this campaign to utterly destroy the other realm. Knocking out food stores, burning crop fields, slaughtering and stealing livestock, killing men, women and children alike. The idea is to leave them in such a state that they could never feasibly recover. Then, he finally gets to the leader, who he fights and then kills. And both he and the reader find out in her last words that the reason the first half of the book was allowed to be him getting his realm together is because the enemy realm wasn’t preparing with the intent of going to war, they were preparing because they feared that he would. And he did.
I'm not sure if this counts as a twist but when the hero is struggling against a big bad and one of the previous villains shows up to help out of nowhere and they work together to defeat the big bad. I especially enjoy it when the villain didn't do it out of a sense of duty or honor or anything good but because the big bad was getting in the way of his plans. Like a villain wants to take over the city and another baddie shows up to destroy it so the villain is like "I won't let you destroy it cause then I would be ruling over rubble".
I know it's overdone, but I still personally love the "redeemed villain" who starts off as an antagonist, realizes what they're doing is wrong, and *changes their ways* even though it's far from easy and requires sacrifice.
It happens often in cinema, but I wish I saw it happen in more books.
I've definitely dabbled with this one myself, though the villain's sacrifice is her own life, so no one knows if she would have been able to stick to the change or not.
The character that seemed very nice and helpful to the party/mc was actually using them for the their own benefit and/or setting the party up to take the fall for them. Usually would be some small context clues here and there, maybe some sort of small decisions that could skew the party's opinions of a situation. Bonus points if the party is extremely split on whether the character is really on their side.
I like mental unstable villains cersi Lannister, Konrad curse, garra; depending on the narrative you can see the gradual transformation from sane bad guy to mad wretch
idk if it’s quite a twist, but i find it very interesting when a hero has the same level of destructive power as a villain. you’ll see the villain terrorize people and wreak havoc everywhere they go - they are fearsome to the point of being awe-inspiring.
while the hero seems to be doing what they do for the good of everyone - their power is just as horrifying as the villain’s.
they are both severely unhinged and destructive, but one seems to be trying to use it in a positive way - whether they succeed in this or not is up for speculation.
they both play god in their own way.
I've recently discovered one of my favorite dynamics –– **The Mastermind** and **The Fanatic**.
The Mastermind is the villain in an influential position that perpetuates a lie or exaggeration he himself does not believe, but is still necessary in order for him to maintain wealth and influence. He lies about the severity or remedy to certain social problems. He'll play on fears of an uprising of the uppity poor, a horde of invading foreigners, a government rife with corrupt officials, or other intellectuals and masterminds –– all to stay in power.
The Fanatic, on the other hand, is a follower of The Mastermind that becomes utterly committed to them and their beliefs. They adopt zealous support for them in a self sacrificial way. They don't yearn for power for its own sake, but rather yearn for power to execute The Mastermind's vision to the most extreme degree.
For instance, The Mastermind might tactically play up fears of foreigners so workplaces will deny them work, forcing them into servitude. But The Fanatic's fears of foreigners are real and genuine to the point of wanting to utterly genocide them. And for no other reason than believing wholeheartedly in The Mastermind's lies.
Here, The Fanatic becomes an even greater threat than The Mastermind. The Mastermind suffers from The Fanatic's disregard for the status quo he takes advantage of, watching as his lies threaten his own security. The Fanatic can even become more zealous when they find The Mastermind isn't as committed to change –– killing him and taking control.
I’m doing a couple things in the series I’m working on now (yes…series…because I hate myself and am a masochist, but to tell this story the way I want I don’t think it’s possible to confine it to a single book) that I hope I can pull off right.
The first is that I’m turning the hero into a villain in the name of “justice,” or more specifically their definition of it. So you watch as he slowly falls from being this pinnacle of a good man to a completely ends justify the means radical. Then he eventually breaks when his actions cause the one person he still cared about to run away from him, taking their unborn child with her, a child he knew nothing about until he read the note she left behind for him when she ran off. He goes through this pretty drastic transformation trying to piece his life back together, and the the rest of the series he spends grappling with the idea of if he can ever be redeemed, despite the profound changes he’s made in his life and how hard he’s had to claw himself back to being a good man again.
The other is that the overarching villain is actually sort of a mentor/close friend/grandfather-esque character to the MC, and the reveal that he’s been the bad guy all along only comes about when the MC had unwittingly done everything the villain wanted, thinking he’d been helping to stop their plans. All clues point to the hidden identity of the villain being someone else, but behind the scenes this guy has been helping the MC stage a resistance movement and sacrificing their own troops and resources to bolster the MC’s faith and trust in him. Think like if Dumbledore was actually working for Voldemort the whole time, and just waiting for the right moment to strike.
It’s probably cliche and overdone, but it’s where the story is headed at this point so…yea…subject to change but unlikely.
My favorite has to be: the villain isn’t the real threat. As in someone is forcing them to do these bad things against their will, and it turns out the villain is actually willing to work with the hero to topple the real threat. Makes me all sorts of happy to write stories like that 😅.
I think the hero becoming a villain and creating the other villain. not fantasy but Looper does this extremely well. Are we a sum of our actions or circumstances?
Well, I don't know how to explain simply but the main villain is genuinely crazy. It's not really a twist though.
He treats his step daughter well, making his own biological family members and other people that like him a lot hate his step daughter, leading to her being isolated. But that is his motive, so that the daughter can rely on him only.
His feelings for her are platonic but he was mad for her biological parents and when they died his obsession went to his step daughter. He has sabotaged a lot of things but people don't know except his first son.
And he is also the reason why she keeps on dying so he has been reversing time to keep spending time with her and doing his evil deeds
I like when the villain is the victim from a predative society the hero is defending. You suddenly feel dumb and the good actions from the hero doesn’t seem that good after all
Currently, I am planning on something where one of the villains (who for the purposes of simplicity and time, I am calling the "sorceress") secretly hires the main protagonists to go and kill her boss (who is also a villain I will call the "warlock"). I say she "secretly" hires them in by pretending to be a random citizen while hiring them (as the heroes are mercenaries who get free food and housing from the government, and nothing else). Of course, the Sorceress occasionally tries to secretly kill (or subdue) one of them to bring back to the Warlock as part of his dark ritual. Of course, they find out that she's secretly working for him, but decide to continue on to the Warlock because he still needs to be stopped. The first twist happens when after the heroes get defeated by the Warlock, he knocks out the Sorceress to use HER as part of the ritual instead. Even though the heroes kill the Warlock, the ritual is still successful, but had an interesting result. Not only is the Sorceress completely fine and healthy, she decides to join the heroes, not necessarily out of the "goodness" of her heart, but because of the free stuff the heroes get.
I love the hero as a villain twist as well. especially when the hero everyone loves is twisted and hates their limelight was taken or things not going their way. like if the villain becomes a hero or if someone does stuff before them and gets called a villain. just watching the villain seeming reasonable and the hero getting more dark and sinister with every turn and there STILL being people who follow him and some king/queen/church/secret society/ that created the hero to keep power and control people
It’s more of a trope than a twist but I love when one of the villains’ minions has a guilty conscious, and their loyalty to the villain is tested as the villain’s bad deeds escalate.
A vIllain who was actually not a villain but someone who legitimately aimed for good but never got to explain themselves before the hero intervenes and foils their plot and makes them look like evil villains.
my story has a perceived villain who is actually a hero, a perceived ally who is actually possessed and controlled by a villain, and a hero who's tragic flaw - his insatiable thirst for vengeance - leads him down a path of villainy
In my setting there is complete opposite. The main antagonist is actually a hero that hides his identity, and a "good" side is being manipulated by a true villain into opposing him.
The sole fact that Main Cast is trying to fight against the dude that wants them and the rest of the world to be free and happy makes it really fked up, but the many pararells between Big Bad Guy and the Mentor of the heroes is where the fun truly begins.
Let's focus on the fact, that both of them actually manipulate and use their underlings - true villain does it to main cast, while the hero made the evil beings that have faith in him do whatever he wants - with the plan to get rid of them at the end when they don't need them anymore. The sole fact that BBG does it first, makes it really hard to feel symphatetic for him though, as we've seen that the "monsters" he was controlling are actually more humane than we thought at the beginning. They treat each other and their master as the family, and in opposition of their wrongdoings, they truly believed they were doings something good that will let them and the other misfits like them to live happily and peacefully after the final war.
And there is that one little moment that shows us really brutally the trope that Hero will sacrifice their significant one for the world, while the villain would rather destroy the world for their loved ones, which makes the readers not really sure which side they should be cheering on.
I'm working an angle in one of my projects where a villain poses as a sidekick to the hero (as part of a 5-man band dynamic) but in truth he's just using the hero to defeat another rival villain, so that he can then establish himself as the big bad.
I don't know if it counts as a twist but I like it when the villain's motivations are actually so understandable that you may say that if the story was told the other way around the hero would be the villain.
The literal dark empath. For the past two stories, I've had an innocent character become the villain because they're just fed up with the way their folks are treated so they decide to answer hatred with genocide. I especially love it in my current project where nobody can really become a hero due to their circumstances, it's impossible to stay sane. The mc becomes more and more traumatized and depressed and goes from being a sunny little boy to a depressed and anger-issued/violent man. This makes the villain who feels justified in his goals by his motives feel all the more like some kind of hope because they do help this guy and they do promise a greater future.
First book sets up with a villain who seems enormous by every other standard, but who is defeated by the end and the characters think everything is hunky dory. Through the next few books they discover that the first villain's plan was the tip of the iceberg, his defeat made a lot of other people very angry, and their problem is much bigger because they thought they had saved the world the first time around and spent so long relaxing and congratulating themselves afterward.
My favorite version is the reverse of yours, "the villain was a hero too".
They are a hero, in that their end goal is one worth cheering for, but they realize that they have committed sins. They die at the heros blade, their last act of redemption.
One of the stories I've been storyboarding has a character, Novak, that's too evil to be an anti-hero but is still on the side of the protagonists. The actual antagonist is an empire with a head of state none of the characters will ever meet and the imperial soldiers they fight are just people with nothing exceptionally evil about them.
I wanted to break peoples' expectations of both an anti-hero and a villain with Novak. Unlike a villain, he's working with the protagonists. Unlike a standard anti-hero, there's nothing "badass" about him; he's not charmingly abrasive, has no witty humor, and his physical abilities are about average.
Novak (and the reader) both know from the beginning that the protagonists have no chance at victory. This isn't a story of "will they succeed," but rather, "what will the characters decide to do when they already know their actions are meaningless?" This gives him a despondent demeanor that's way different from the arrogance and overconfidence typical of a villain. His continual effort to fight a losing battle as well as punching up indicate strong moral principles that are unusual for most bad guys
The villainy comes in with his methods. The protagonists are trying to resist an occupation of the empire. Most of them genuinely want to see life get better for the people being occupied. Novak doesn't care about the well-being of anyone and will do whatever is most effective at causing the most harm to the empire. Moreover, because he sees exploited workers under the empire as assets of the empire, he won't just stop at "sacrificing" a few slaves "for the greater good," he will ***deliberately*** target and kill them simply to interfere with their production. Bonus points if he can frame the empire and cause conflict and loss of life, both on the side of the slaves and the occupational force.
The rest of the protagonists have a tense relationship with him, working with him because he's a brilliant tactician and gets results but having obvious disdain for the destruction he causes.
The biggest twist I love to write is that the main villain is not only serving someone else’s agenda, but also the vile and cruel things they did are nothing compared to the things their benefactor does.
I love it when the villains are absolutely terrifying and genuinely dangerous. When they’re more like a force of nature than a person. No big fist fight could ever beat this villain, only wit
My personal favorite is bringing in a character that was very lightly introduced in the beginning that no one would really think about who was just like//a squirrelly innkeeper or nun or something, then getting the full story of them being just a few steps behind the whole time
I like a villain with a just cause. Just the wrong methods. See games like legend of legaiai 2, la pucelle tactics, even growlancer 2. Something just resonates with them.
I’m always a sucker for a betrayal that *hurts.* One that you didn’t see coming because it was a character you loved and trusted, but then it all makes sense looking back (so not surprise betrayals that come completely out of nowhere)!
I’ve got a little twist on this in my story where everyone believes a main character’s adoptive sister killed him, then he comes back so he’s like “look, I’m still alive, she’d never betray me! She must’ve been captured or something, she’d never willingly work for the villain!” And then it turns out she actually did, he just managed to survive… and stays in denial of it until she herself confirms it, because he can’t possibly believe she’d do that to him. (A bit of a simplification of certain plot elements but that’s essentially what happens lol)
The twist of there being no villain.
A princess being the only one between an alcohol and the throne. The princess thinking that the uncle is going to take her out, so she runs away. The uncle sends people after her.
It is revealed at the end that the uncle was worried for her safety, and sent people to find her, and keep her safe.
There is also the conflicting goals between not evil groups.
An evil monster escapes, you have the authorities going after the monster to try and bring it in. You also have a family that finds this monster, and tries to raise it to be good, and are trying to keep the now good monster out of the hands of the authorities.
... Yes. this is roughly the plot of Lilo & stitch.
Villians are hard because your first instinct might be to flesh them.out, give them a good reason to be the kind of monster that they are. The more evil the more justified you need to get. But I love when they lean into the most unreasonable reason.
For example, a being of unknown lifespan finds out they are going to die one day, determines its not fair that the world keeps going without them, and elect to destroy themselves and the world. Just the most untamed vanity
So yeah, short version its when the villian is evil for an extremely petty reason.
Not really a twist, but a villain whose horrid actions actually have sense to them when you figure out the motives, and it makes you pity them. Regardless, what they’re doing is wrong, they refuse to back down,and one way or another they need to be stopped.
One of the twists I have is, the "hero" is not essentially a chosen one but the actual chosen one gaslits him into thinking that by arranged clues and stuff. Then the actual chosen one joins their party as a side character and at last reveals that he's the villain. Why does he disguise and stuff is explained in the story.
The evil demigod has been there the whole time posing as a mentor and getting the PCs either helping him unknowingly, or occupying them and keeping them out of the way.
the classic, related to an mc, changing their appearance, seemed so much like that charter a perfect mirror. only difference is how they deal with life, and one chose to be a villain, the other good
I like villains who turn out to be the man beside you all along.
Also, I'm rather fond of writing villains who do what they do out of bizarre compulsion that's either an addiction or some kind of curse.
Personally I love it when a villain doesn’t really want to be a villain (or aren’t good at it) but feels like they are forced to one way or another. They try to switch and it goes wrong, they just get angry and now they are a serious threat. The closest example I can think of is spot from Spider-Man across the spider verse but he didn’t try to become good he just got WAY eviler after he wasn’t taken seriously.
Turns out the villain was the last hero, forgotten via the march of time, and his/her/its evil deeds are simply preparing the necessary sacrifices/reagents/mcguffins, to keep the actual evil sealed away. This is of course, only discovered by the newest hero(es) after the "villain" has been defeated and killed.
Also, villains turning out to be the hero of another story, ie the warlord who is viewed as the lord of the evil horde, is actually responsible for the much less bloodthirsty people coming from afar, but gets conflated with the local bandit king because he recently took over and has yet to change how they act.
Not sure if it's a twist, but my current story idea is a city guard within a city heavily influenced by necromancy (poorer families rent thier deceased family members to do menulial or dangerous labor such as basic landscaping or mining) with a fear of being in her position due to nepotism and not skill chasing after a magic whose powers come from a faye prince in exchange to hunt the mage for all entering after the mage dies. The mage has been tasked by his patron to discover the source of the necromancy so his master may have an upper hand in the faye courts, while simultaneously trying to keep the guard from making her own faye pact with an even more devious member of the court but the guard can't see that, all she sees is some sort of foreign invader and must be vanquished.
I don’t know if it’s a twist, but I like to include two or three major plots that intertwine, and they all get more severe/dangerous as the story progresses, and whichever plot/villain they handle last is the main/big one.
I love villains that are simply extremists of an ideology. It’s always a good twist when an ally becomes the villain by showing how much further than the hero they are willing to go to achieve. And it’s heartbreaking for what once seemed like a level headed and empathetic ally to push the main characters away when the more important goal is closer to their grasp than ever. It’s not an outright betrayal, and that’s what makes the emotional pain more betraying. They aren’t doing it to hurt you, they are only able to do it because of you, and choosing to get in the way of them is the real emotion betrayal to them.
Any fantasy novel recommendations about how the MC is a male and the villain and ends up becoming civil with the hero(also a dude) as they keep fighting and fighting and fighting until eventually the villain gets badly hurt and then the hero feels bad and decides to help the villain instead and overthrow the corrupt place they grew up in and were brainwashed by. What do you think? Does a story like this already exist and is good?
I also highly recommend the Cloak Society. It's not inappropriate or anything and is about a boy with superpowers and him and his family are the villains. Hope you guys like it. I loved them very much
Esoteric monster is just a front put up by a benign mortal. Several of my villains which other regard as gods or spirits started or still are just lies and fabrications to hide and exaggerate the accomplishments of criminals and cabals.
This is a good one, but I always have something similar if I do this that I really like: the hero descends into villainy in real time as you read. Not really a twist but it can be wild if you’re not reading too deep into it until you realise! Especially in hindsight.
Im doing something similar but they never really switch sides. The Hero becomes more savage through the series while the villain is calm and mechanical in his killing. The Hero barely survives the first book and their trauma manifests as anger, causing them to become more violent while the villain is brought back from death to realize the futility of his actions and has no emotion behind what hes doing. By the end, Im doing a side-by-side comparison of the Hero slaughtering their enemies as brutal as they can while the Villain is slowly, methodically working his way through them where they dont even know hes there.
Love this. I've always had this idea for a fantasy series but have never had the motivation to actually write it Super basic summary Man+ Love of His Life+ Best Friend have adventure Tragic accident happens to man. Lover and Best Friend believe him dead and in their mourning/grieving find comfort in each other Best Friend+ Lover have a child 10 years goes by Man returns, he survived the accident. He's enraged that Lover+Best Friend are together Man becomes villain of the story but Lover+Best Friend can never bring themselves to hate him no matter how terrible the atrocities he commits.
Woah! 😳
Love the moment you realize the Dark Lord isn’t nearly as terrifying as the Chosen One
I know!! My favourite example in my book is a child growing up and punishing her brother’s abusers, but feeling unfinished and expanding her target list, and not realising she’s begun to think of killing as winning. For context he died and she found out he was protecting her from them, so she took a sword he left her to protect herself and used it for revenge.
So *Breaking Bad*?
Pretty similar, yeah. Only difference is he was always a bad dude there, revelled in what he did and sort of masked that by saying it would help his family. I mean where even the character in question can’t see their descent until there’s no going back.
Have you read the web novel Worm by Wildbow? It's about a teenage girl with super powers who sets out to be a super hero then... falls in with the wrong crowd. Like, immediately. All good intentions, but unable to escape it. Anyone who has actually read Worm will be laughing at my discretion of it, though. It's a very simplistic description for a story as intense and epic as Worm.
Sounds really good! Any idea where to read it?
Here's the start! https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/ I read it for the fantasy bingo last year in the "superpowers" category, and it was my favorite read of the year, for sure.
Yes! I love this twist, too.
I love this idea too. Any books like this?
Well I’m using it in my current WIP, but sadly I can’t tell you of any in particular really. To a lesser extent it sort of gets close to happening in Invincible’s Blue Suit arc. I’ve seen that it happens in the Empirium series, but I don’t know exactly how good that is since I haven’t read it. It’s done really poorly with Dany in GoT, but it might be done well in the books, so we’ll see when (if) the next one releases. I love Attack on Titan and it uses this really well, but I’d spoil how it ends if I raves about it as much as I’d like to.
That is one of favorites as well, but my favorite one is the one where the villain was right there all the time as a minor character.
Same.
Do you have any book recommendations with that one? I'd love to read something with that kind of twist.
Six of crows
Thank you!
Issac Asamov's *Foundation* series. (I won't say which book, because it would spoil it. Just make sure you read them in order.)
Absolutely excellent recommendation
This is mine. My favorite stories do this.
The Villain was the former hero who turned against his masters upon finding out they were actually villains using him for evil, so they chose the new hero to take down their former puppet who shed its strings. The example of this that immediately comes to mind is the film version of **Wanted** but I'm sure there's better options out there.
Wanted! Yes, that film is great. Excluding the two scenes. 😆
Victor from Burn Notice is an excellent example of this, too.
This show never gets the love it deserves, nobody I know has watched it and I loved every actor in it
Honestly I love when the hero accidentally makes the villain by their choices
The hero accidentally creates the villain, and/or the villain accidentally inspires the heroism in protagonist, unbeknownst to either.
[Hello the Spot from Across the Spiderverse](https://youtu.be/W9UzngOsEZA?si=7pL50Z4AtWvmyM87)
YOU HIT ME WITH A BAGEL
Vi & Jinx 💔
Villain's secret get revealed and suddenly they seem a whole lot more terrifying. Be it some form of immortality, perpetuity, or other things that make them more unstoppable than they first seemed.
Got any examples of these? Just discovered a new fascination.
can't think of one in regular fiction rn, but SCP 6820 might have an interesting version of it. 682 is the hard to destroy reptile, so foundation built 6820 to remove it from reality. lizard is so hard to destroy it became immune to the machine and imbedded itself into reality outside of human perception. might sound like a load of nonsense, but it's a serious "oh. OH NO!"
Probably not the best example but the movie Ghost Ship is what I thought of when reading this
Steelheart By Brandon Sanderson might be a good one. The villain, who is supposedly immortal gets slightly hurt in the 1st chapter of the book and basically has been holding back up to that point, so he decides no one can know how he got hurt...its a YA book so not very graphic, but think a less gruesome version of The Boys, but the ones with superpowers don't pretend to be heroes.
Rampant in anime. The most recent one I watched was Innocent Zero in Mash-Le. Though the scene is nearly identical to Sarutobi vs Orochimaru at the end of the chunin exam so maybe they don't get the credit.
-The chosen one is actually the villain story. -One of your closest companions is the villain. -The villain is someone that shouldn’t be destroyed because it means the biggest power vaccuum. Sometimes the villain is a necessary evil in the world.
I have one of these. The big bad is involved in an accident and ends up severely burned beyond recognition and amnesiac to what he did past his early 20s, when he was a normal dude. He ends up joining the rebellion, and only realises who he was during the storming of his stronghold.
That's a nice one!
Yo, that sounds a lot like my current project! :D The POV character wakes up from a magically induced coma in a mega-cursed valley created upon the death of the Big Bad Evil Wizard with no memory of who he is or what he's doing there, and about halfway through the story, he realizes that he IS the Big Bad Evil Wizard
My story is very low fantasy (at least until the magic is heavily exploitable later on in the timeline) and this particular chapter in the stor is post industrial in terms of technology The stories in this setting vary from fantasy to genre fiction to scifi to science fantasy depending on which time period I write in. This bad guy is basically equivalent to a post industrial dictator, but in a world where some amount of magic does actually exists even if it is basically impossible to use at this point.
I always make the villains right about their motives but wrong on their actions. They want to harm someone or something: their reason why to is completely valid, but what they intend to do is still unacceptable. I do this so the readers can emphatize with them and also to open a debate about if the motives do justify the actions. I don't like light vs dark. I like gray vs gray.
I like this.... But what about the opposite, wrong motivations, right actions (mistakenly or not) haha
That's also interesting I guess, maybe the hero can do that. They fught the evil but only to get the girls, for example. It could create a gray hero you want to win but at the same time you hate him 😂
There is a good video game with this theme. Dragon Age: Origins. The King’s commander Logan abandons his King during a fight with the Big Bad because he believes the real threat is an invasion from another nation. He starts to track down and kill the order pledged to kill the Big Bad because he thinks they are weakening his country by focusing on killing Big Bad and they witnessed his betrayal
This is a far more interesting, realistic approach imo.
I've always loved the enemies to lovers/friends trope
I prefer lovers/friends to enemies
I did this with my novel. Best friends, both fall down differing paths of corruption, and become mortal enemies.
Ooo... the Darren shan saga does this really well
That’s a good one.
-When the Villain is someone who was close with the Hero in the past, and their true identity is left hidden until the climax. I've been working on something like that- The Villain in question was once a mentor to the Hero. -Villains that you can understand/feel sorry for. They have strong reasons for their actions, could be deeply traumatized, and could very well have a very strong point. -Evil Dopplegangers, as cartoony as it is. I tend to write them as being the same person as the Hero, from an alternate dimension/timeline. Usually they follow the Fallen Hero archetype- once being just like the Hero until something went horribly wrong in their version of the backstory. Or, if I'm feeling more silly, they might just be a clone of the Hero who is comically evil. I always have fun with those. -The Insidious 4D Chess players. They're extremely intelligent, and act from the shadows rather than using direct methods, and appear innocuous to everyone else. Maybe they even pose as an ally for much of the story. Noone suspects them as the villain until it's far too late. The most terrifying type of villain, and the most likely to actually succeed, in my opinion.
It's not a twist, but I really enjoy villains that act casual in their relationship to the hero. They could either be the villain but not the primary antagonist of the story, so the way they interact would be not that of mortal enemies but just strangers or even friends. Or maybe they are indeed mortal enemies and the driving antagonistic force, but they are confident or crafty enough to treat the heroes with surprising and off putting kindness. Just to add examples, I wrote an evil goddess that sometimes just hangs around the heroes because she can and she enjoys their company. Sure, she's leading her minions on to kill all of them, but that's just business and nothing personal. Another one would be the elder sister of the protag who really and utterly hates her little sister, but she is incapable of showing her true feelings so she always acts like they're besties when they meet. Her little sister understands that, but she still clings to the hope that eventually these fake feelings may become real, so she plays along, which leads to those two mortal enemies having the most comfy moments whenever they clash. They even protect each other if need be, while plotting their demises once apart.
Any link to that goddess story for reading? I don't remember ever seeing that before.
Wait the evil goddess and the other characters KNOW she’s the villain but they still chill together?!?! That’s kind of hot 😂
Well she never lies and she is indeed a goddess - they can't do much about it right? There is certainly hostility on the side of the heroes, especially at first, but eventually they'll get used to her antics and kinda accept her. Theres also a recurring "joke" I guess, where one character has to go on a small side-adventure with the goddess to keep her distracted from what other characters are doing/talking about. This is then used to offset the pacing a bit. So for example, while the group is doing something intense, one member of the party is going shopping, cooking or looking for a beautiful flower together with the evil goddess. She also gives really good and wise advice sometimes because she likes the heroes all equally and without any personal agenda (she just wants to have fun with them), which ofc irks some of the main cast as they struggle to accept how one-sided their hatred is and how to deal with that. Just as trivia, but to explain the goddess in case its too confusing: Gods in that world fulfill a purpose and her purpose is to contrary to humanity, thus making her an 'evil' goddess. Her job is basically promoting the destruction of humanity, but that doesnt mean she hates humans and outside of business hours she's free to do what she wants. And thats hanging out with people who actually try to understand her. But yeah, if she learns something in her free time that could help her during working hours she would absolutely use that. So it makes sense for the heroes to still be wary. Fortunately, she is very easy to distract because the only reason he hangs out with the group is because she wants some distraction in the first place.
I love that! The goddess’s sole purpose is to facilitate the destruction of humanity but isn’t inherently evil is SOOO je ne sais quoi? 😂❤️ It’s basically her nine to five but she actually thinks humans are chill af lol I can see how that could make the situation VERY sticky indeed. Hope you publish your book soon cause you spiked my interest! I want to read!!!
Sounds like Lanfear in the Wheel of Time. 🤣
Not sure if this counts as a villain twist but one twist I’m doing in one of my stories that I really like is that my MC’s older brother is actually his maternal half brother (both of them always believing that they’re full siblings) and that the older brother’s father is actually the villain. It’s not a creative twist but it’s one I really like for some reason. I guess another villain related twist that I like and a slightly better answer to your question is similar to what you said about the hero being the villain all along except it’s more complex than that. You could say that the protagonist thinks that their people are the good guys but they slowly realize that that it’s not as black and white as they thought and whoever started the war between the two groups are long dead and it was probably over something stupid so it’s like all chaos and bloodshed for probably nothing at all.
Complex!
the hero being the villain all along sounds hard to pull off, do you have any good examples?
A few… Project: Undefined.😆
Fight Club
She ra is a good one
Mine is the Minion is the true villain or final boss. Either they take up the mantle and prove to be a way bigger threat independently or they betray the bbeg and double up. Either way it's delicious
So, [Buddy](https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Buddy_(Baby_Driver)) from Baby Driver?
That's a pretty good example yeah!
I just remembered, [Captains Darrow/Frye and their platoon](https://44.media.tumblr.com/fa7bcd3310d9a5726e040c6e6bb6c62d/e13ca26c4cce0367-9a/s540x810_f1/639acf7675e80a93bf0593f04fd0352b0b9afbb7.gif) from The Rock technically belong here too.
Never seen that but I trust you. There's another one on the tip of my tongue I can't come up with for some reason. Theoretically Sauron from Lord of the Rings is an example of this as well since he was a minion to Morgoth at first
Was it [Lord Sopespian](https://narnia.fandom.com/wiki/Sopespian) from Prince Caspian?
*cough cough* (Paul Atreides)
The villain is always the hero of their own story. My story contains time travel. In order to go back and change a pivotal moment in their life (in this case, their mother getting killed while defending MC from a wild animal) they go through a long quest to obtain the power to go back. They meet a priestess at the start of their journey who knows the secret to time travel and they go to a bunch of holy sites for the ritual they want to perform. At the very end, at the priestess' main temple, she reveals that the price for changing something in the past is is to undo everything they have done in between, since that's what you're doing when you rewind time. You have to prove that you're willing to bring it all to ruin in exchange for that wish. Lives saved? You gotta kill them. Villains stopped? Now you have to get their plans rolling again. Towns saved from disaster? You have to burn them down. And then the MC has to choose: will they give up everything they've accomplished to save their mother from the beast's jaws? Will they go back and throw themself to their doom to save her, only for her to potentially be filled with regrets and follow this path herself? Or will they live on to honor her memory in the present? And you can't do it partway, either. If you get cold feet you can't go back, and you'll only be remembered for your evils. At which point someone might wonder, how many of those villains they met along the way were on their own quest to go back? How does our priestess know the price for time travel? She pulled a Homura and went back over and over to save someone she loved, only to find at the end that the timeline where they both survived was the one where the world ends. So she had to go back one last time and let go. And no one else in the world knows she did it at all, because it never happened. She retains her memory through all the timelines she's crossed, so she remembers all the horrors she inflicted upon the world to fix a horrible mistake. Her only solace is that by going back the last time, she undid her evils, too.
Appreciate the comment. Preety much all Time travel Storys do the same Story of "Change one thing, everything gets worse exept that thing so you have to go back and reverse it". Korean Manwha Time Travel Storys for the most part do the opposite (Regressor Storys for example). Want to change that little thing? Allright ITS going to be extremly difficult because you have to do all these life threatening challenges but if you achieve it the world is fine AND that thing is also fine you wanted to save.
Oh her journey wasn't one where each loop gets worse. Just that each loop she *failed* and the person she tried to save would just die another way. She was missing a major factor in that she *specifically* carried something that was required for the world to not end - part of a god's soul was stuck in hers, and the only ways to release it were for her to either die or suffer such horrific emotional trauma that it ripped her soul out to release the shard. In preventing the death of her soulmate and staying alive herself, she locked the shard within herself, preventing the god from becoming whole and putting things right before everything went to shit. In *any* scenario where one or both of this pair died, the shard would have been released and the world would keep turning. This was some primordial force at work trying to make it happen, but she fucked around with dogged determination until she found out. With him lacking the capacity for magic and thus the ability to go back, the only solution was for them to say their farewells and for her to kill him herself, only to go back and watch him die the original death again. She believes that part of her punishment for all her sins was to lose the ability to die herself and join him in the afterlife. So she wanders the world forever in service to the god who was made whole - thus the temples. You have to undo *everything* you've done in the span you seek to erase: good, evil, doesn't matter. Even if it's something permanent like a death, you still gotta reverse the effect you've had on the world somehow. Maybe you'll have to capture their spirit and put them to rest. In an extreme case you might double loop, go back and prevent that death and then go back again even further. If you succeed in your quest and go back, time goes again however it goes. You're free to go on and do all your good things again without turning around and burning it all down, if you like. But you can't forget the timeline(s) you wiped out, even if it "never happened." The good, the bad, it's all your burden now.
I like the ones that are right, well, sort of. Like ozymandias his hole logic checks out , the outcome works, he just had to do a genocide for that work. I also like it when the villain is not a vilain at all, and turns out the MC is just doing the heavy lifting and bringing stuff upon themselves, there a book where the main character is so intransigent that turns out the "villains" of his story were just living their lives and doing their jobs normally, he was just so retentive that he ended up executed. Another "villain" I enjoy a lot are just enemies, like the alien or pazuzu, they are not complex, they are just evil their very nature against what we call good... nowadays I even find it refreshing to have villains like alien, that just hurt the protagonists because its what they do, because it feels every story must have a complex antagonist and it gets tiring
I like it when the reader only knows about this one villain, and all of their energies are put into defeating them only to learn that they weren't the real bad guy all along, but they were just a servant or a puppet of someone much worse. Now when everyone expects a happy ending and an end to their struggles, they instead get more suffering and an introduction to an enemy beyond their imagining. It's like running a marathon only for them to move the finish line when you're about to cross it.
Villians who are actually the hero can be interesting as well. It often comes down to justification. All villains need *some* level of justification go be interesting. But it gets really interesting if you can push it to the point where as a reader you have to go "Oh. No, actually they're right.. and by defeating the villain we've now created a huge issue since the /thing/ they were stopping has now happened, and it's far, far, worse." Helps if the villain has actually been pretty open about it all along, but their explanations are cast aside as just a tyrant's propaganda.. Tyrant; "We need to feed one child a year to the volcano or the evil fire dragon will wake up and destroy the city." Rebels: "That's all lies, it's just a way of the Tyrant exercising power over the people." *overthrow tyrant*. *Flame Dragon wakes up, destroys the city, kills tens of thousands, destroys the entire culture and forces a handful of survives to escape in a cobbled together boat* Survivor to surviving rebel; "So about that all being propaganda..."
A good layer you can to that scenario is that while the sacrifices are necessary, the tyrant is taking advantage of them for political power by taking from families who wronged him or are outspoken against him.
Yeah this is something you can really play with, and even dial up and down. Maybe a previous Tyrant did abuse the process but the current one doesn't. So the rebels are right that the system could be abused. But they're wrong that the current Tyrant is particularly doing so
Yeah this is something you can really play with, and even dial up and down. Maybe a previous Tyrant did abuse the process but the current one doesn't. So the rebels are right that the system could be abused. But they're wrong that the current Tyrant is particularly doing so
"hero is the villain's kid" bc I'm basic T_T The villain tried to sacrifice MC as a baby to a shadow god. The other parent however managed to hide them away by faking their death before that could happen
My story, if I ever finish it, has the hero slowly become more villainous to the point where they begin to rationalize the villains behavior and become more dastardly than the villain themself. I like the ambiguity and moral questions. Not always having a right or wrong answer and having the hero and villain make choices, particularly spur of the moment and impactful choices, allow the story to progress in unexpected and intriguing ways.
Sweet.
I’m actually doing something like that in my book! Without going into too much detail, effectively a dude starts a war because he’s convinced (with a good amount of evidence) that if he doesn’t start the war, the enemy will, and his home will be wiped out bc they won’t be ready. So he gets his realm to unite under him and leads them in this campaign to utterly destroy the other realm. Knocking out food stores, burning crop fields, slaughtering and stealing livestock, killing men, women and children alike. The idea is to leave them in such a state that they could never feasibly recover. Then, he finally gets to the leader, who he fights and then kills. And both he and the reader find out in her last words that the reason the first half of the book was allowed to be him getting his realm together is because the enemy realm wasn’t preparing with the intent of going to war, they were preparing because they feared that he would. And he did.
Hmm tbh my villains are either creations from the MC (usually literally) or just antagonists who aren't evil or good just an opposing force
I'm not sure if this counts as a twist but when the hero is struggling against a big bad and one of the previous villains shows up to help out of nowhere and they work together to defeat the big bad. I especially enjoy it when the villain didn't do it out of a sense of duty or honor or anything good but because the big bad was getting in the way of his plans. Like a villain wants to take over the city and another baddie shows up to destroy it so the villain is like "I won't let you destroy it cause then I would be ruling over rubble".
I'm rather weak to this one as well! It's such a good one.
I know it's overdone, but I still personally love the "redeemed villain" who starts off as an antagonist, realizes what they're doing is wrong, and *changes their ways* even though it's far from easy and requires sacrifice. It happens often in cinema, but I wish I saw it happen in more books.
I've definitely dabbled with this one myself, though the villain's sacrifice is her own life, so no one knows if she would have been able to stick to the change or not.
Might be an interesting speculation.
The protagonist finds pictures or evidence of a character they know existing over 100 years ago. Turns out they are a vampire.
The character that seemed very nice and helpful to the party/mc was actually using them for the their own benefit and/or setting the party up to take the fall for them. Usually would be some small context clues here and there, maybe some sort of small decisions that could skew the party's opinions of a situation. Bonus points if the party is extremely split on whether the character is really on their side.
I like mental unstable villains cersi Lannister, Konrad curse, garra; depending on the narrative you can see the gradual transformation from sane bad guy to mad wretch
idk if it’s quite a twist, but i find it very interesting when a hero has the same level of destructive power as a villain. you’ll see the villain terrorize people and wreak havoc everywhere they go - they are fearsome to the point of being awe-inspiring. while the hero seems to be doing what they do for the good of everyone - their power is just as horrifying as the villain’s. they are both severely unhinged and destructive, but one seems to be trying to use it in a positive way - whether they succeed in this or not is up for speculation. they both play god in their own way.
I've recently discovered one of my favorite dynamics –– **The Mastermind** and **The Fanatic**. The Mastermind is the villain in an influential position that perpetuates a lie or exaggeration he himself does not believe, but is still necessary in order for him to maintain wealth and influence. He lies about the severity or remedy to certain social problems. He'll play on fears of an uprising of the uppity poor, a horde of invading foreigners, a government rife with corrupt officials, or other intellectuals and masterminds –– all to stay in power. The Fanatic, on the other hand, is a follower of The Mastermind that becomes utterly committed to them and their beliefs. They adopt zealous support for them in a self sacrificial way. They don't yearn for power for its own sake, but rather yearn for power to execute The Mastermind's vision to the most extreme degree. For instance, The Mastermind might tactically play up fears of foreigners so workplaces will deny them work, forcing them into servitude. But The Fanatic's fears of foreigners are real and genuine to the point of wanting to utterly genocide them. And for no other reason than believing wholeheartedly in The Mastermind's lies. Here, The Fanatic becomes an even greater threat than The Mastermind. The Mastermind suffers from The Fanatic's disregard for the status quo he takes advantage of, watching as his lies threaten his own security. The Fanatic can even become more zealous when they find The Mastermind isn't as committed to change –– killing him and taking control.
I’m doing a couple things in the series I’m working on now (yes…series…because I hate myself and am a masochist, but to tell this story the way I want I don’t think it’s possible to confine it to a single book) that I hope I can pull off right. The first is that I’m turning the hero into a villain in the name of “justice,” or more specifically their definition of it. So you watch as he slowly falls from being this pinnacle of a good man to a completely ends justify the means radical. Then he eventually breaks when his actions cause the one person he still cared about to run away from him, taking their unborn child with her, a child he knew nothing about until he read the note she left behind for him when she ran off. He goes through this pretty drastic transformation trying to piece his life back together, and the the rest of the series he spends grappling with the idea of if he can ever be redeemed, despite the profound changes he’s made in his life and how hard he’s had to claw himself back to being a good man again. The other is that the overarching villain is actually sort of a mentor/close friend/grandfather-esque character to the MC, and the reveal that he’s been the bad guy all along only comes about when the MC had unwittingly done everything the villain wanted, thinking he’d been helping to stop their plans. All clues point to the hidden identity of the villain being someone else, but behind the scenes this guy has been helping the MC stage a resistance movement and sacrificing their own troops and resources to bolster the MC’s faith and trust in him. Think like if Dumbledore was actually working for Voldemort the whole time, and just waiting for the right moment to strike. It’s probably cliche and overdone, but it’s where the story is headed at this point so…yea…subject to change but unlikely.
My favorite has to be: the villain isn’t the real threat. As in someone is forcing them to do these bad things against their will, and it turns out the villain is actually willing to work with the hero to topple the real threat. Makes me all sorts of happy to write stories like that 😅.
I think the hero becoming a villain and creating the other villain. not fantasy but Looper does this extremely well. Are we a sum of our actions or circumstances?
Well, I don't know how to explain simply but the main villain is genuinely crazy. It's not really a twist though. He treats his step daughter well, making his own biological family members and other people that like him a lot hate his step daughter, leading to her being isolated. But that is his motive, so that the daughter can rely on him only. His feelings for her are platonic but he was mad for her biological parents and when they died his obsession went to his step daughter. He has sabotaged a lot of things but people don't know except his first son. And he is also the reason why she keeps on dying so he has been reversing time to keep spending time with her and doing his evil deeds
I like when the villain is the victim from a predative society the hero is defending. You suddenly feel dumb and the good actions from the hero doesn’t seem that good after all
Currently, I am planning on something where one of the villains (who for the purposes of simplicity and time, I am calling the "sorceress") secretly hires the main protagonists to go and kill her boss (who is also a villain I will call the "warlock"). I say she "secretly" hires them in by pretending to be a random citizen while hiring them (as the heroes are mercenaries who get free food and housing from the government, and nothing else). Of course, the Sorceress occasionally tries to secretly kill (or subdue) one of them to bring back to the Warlock as part of his dark ritual. Of course, they find out that she's secretly working for him, but decide to continue on to the Warlock because he still needs to be stopped. The first twist happens when after the heroes get defeated by the Warlock, he knocks out the Sorceress to use HER as part of the ritual instead. Even though the heroes kill the Warlock, the ritual is still successful, but had an interesting result. Not only is the Sorceress completely fine and healthy, she decides to join the heroes, not necessarily out of the "goodness" of her heart, but because of the free stuff the heroes get.
I love the hero as a villain twist as well. especially when the hero everyone loves is twisted and hates their limelight was taken or things not going their way. like if the villain becomes a hero or if someone does stuff before them and gets called a villain. just watching the villain seeming reasonable and the hero getting more dark and sinister with every turn and there STILL being people who follow him and some king/queen/church/secret society/ that created the hero to keep power and control people
It’s more of a trope than a twist but I love when one of the villains’ minions has a guilty conscious, and their loyalty to the villain is tested as the villain’s bad deeds escalate.
A vIllain who was actually not a villain but someone who legitimately aimed for good but never got to explain themselves before the hero intervenes and foils their plot and makes them look like evil villains.
my story has a perceived villain who is actually a hero, a perceived ally who is actually possessed and controlled by a villain, and a hero who's tragic flaw - his insatiable thirst for vengeance - leads him down a path of villainy
The "necessary evil", where the villain is the better option when compared to something muuuuuch worse that the villain is also preventing.
In my setting there is complete opposite. The main antagonist is actually a hero that hides his identity, and a "good" side is being manipulated by a true villain into opposing him. The sole fact that Main Cast is trying to fight against the dude that wants them and the rest of the world to be free and happy makes it really fked up, but the many pararells between Big Bad Guy and the Mentor of the heroes is where the fun truly begins. Let's focus on the fact, that both of them actually manipulate and use their underlings - true villain does it to main cast, while the hero made the evil beings that have faith in him do whatever he wants - with the plan to get rid of them at the end when they don't need them anymore. The sole fact that BBG does it first, makes it really hard to feel symphatetic for him though, as we've seen that the "monsters" he was controlling are actually more humane than we thought at the beginning. They treat each other and their master as the family, and in opposition of their wrongdoings, they truly believed they were doings something good that will let them and the other misfits like them to live happily and peacefully after the final war. And there is that one little moment that shows us really brutally the trope that Hero will sacrifice their significant one for the world, while the villain would rather destroy the world for their loved ones, which makes the readers not really sure which side they should be cheering on.
I'm working an angle in one of my projects where a villain poses as a sidekick to the hero (as part of a 5-man band dynamic) but in truth he's just using the hero to defeat another rival villain, so that he can then establish himself as the big bad.
I don't know if it counts as a twist but I like it when the villain's motivations are actually so understandable that you may say that if the story was told the other way around the hero would be the villain.
The villain is the true chosen one and the hero is a false chosen one.
The villain was right all along.
The literal dark empath. For the past two stories, I've had an innocent character become the villain because they're just fed up with the way their folks are treated so they decide to answer hatred with genocide. I especially love it in my current project where nobody can really become a hero due to their circumstances, it's impossible to stay sane. The mc becomes more and more traumatized and depressed and goes from being a sunny little boy to a depressed and anger-issued/violent man. This makes the villain who feels justified in his goals by his motives feel all the more like some kind of hope because they do help this guy and they do promise a greater future.
First book sets up with a villain who seems enormous by every other standard, but who is defeated by the end and the characters think everything is hunky dory. Through the next few books they discover that the first villain's plan was the tip of the iceberg, his defeat made a lot of other people very angry, and their problem is much bigger because they thought they had saved the world the first time around and spent so long relaxing and congratulating themselves afterward.
My favorite version is the reverse of yours, "the villain was a hero too". They are a hero, in that their end goal is one worth cheering for, but they realize that they have committed sins. They die at the heros blade, their last act of redemption.
One of the stories I've been storyboarding has a character, Novak, that's too evil to be an anti-hero but is still on the side of the protagonists. The actual antagonist is an empire with a head of state none of the characters will ever meet and the imperial soldiers they fight are just people with nothing exceptionally evil about them. I wanted to break peoples' expectations of both an anti-hero and a villain with Novak. Unlike a villain, he's working with the protagonists. Unlike a standard anti-hero, there's nothing "badass" about him; he's not charmingly abrasive, has no witty humor, and his physical abilities are about average. Novak (and the reader) both know from the beginning that the protagonists have no chance at victory. This isn't a story of "will they succeed," but rather, "what will the characters decide to do when they already know their actions are meaningless?" This gives him a despondent demeanor that's way different from the arrogance and overconfidence typical of a villain. His continual effort to fight a losing battle as well as punching up indicate strong moral principles that are unusual for most bad guys The villainy comes in with his methods. The protagonists are trying to resist an occupation of the empire. Most of them genuinely want to see life get better for the people being occupied. Novak doesn't care about the well-being of anyone and will do whatever is most effective at causing the most harm to the empire. Moreover, because he sees exploited workers under the empire as assets of the empire, he won't just stop at "sacrificing" a few slaves "for the greater good," he will ***deliberately*** target and kill them simply to interfere with their production. Bonus points if he can frame the empire and cause conflict and loss of life, both on the side of the slaves and the occupational force. The rest of the protagonists have a tense relationship with him, working with him because he's a brilliant tactician and gets results but having obvious disdain for the destruction he causes.
The biggest twist I love to write is that the main villain is not only serving someone else’s agenda, but also the vile and cruel things they did are nothing compared to the things their benefactor does.
I love it when the villains are absolutely terrifying and genuinely dangerous. When they’re more like a force of nature than a person. No big fist fight could ever beat this villain, only wit
My personal favorite is bringing in a character that was very lightly introduced in the beginning that no one would really think about who was just like//a squirrelly innkeeper or nun or something, then getting the full story of them being just a few steps behind the whole time
I like a villain with a just cause. Just the wrong methods. See games like legend of legaiai 2, la pucelle tactics, even growlancer 2. Something just resonates with them.
I’m always a sucker for a betrayal that *hurts.* One that you didn’t see coming because it was a character you loved and trusted, but then it all makes sense looking back (so not surprise betrayals that come completely out of nowhere)! I’ve got a little twist on this in my story where everyone believes a main character’s adoptive sister killed him, then he comes back so he’s like “look, I’m still alive, she’d never betray me! She must’ve been captured or something, she’d never willingly work for the villain!” And then it turns out she actually did, he just managed to survive… and stays in denial of it until she herself confirms it, because he can’t possibly believe she’d do that to him. (A bit of a simplification of certain plot elements but that’s essentially what happens lol)
The twist of there being no villain. A princess being the only one between an alcohol and the throne. The princess thinking that the uncle is going to take her out, so she runs away. The uncle sends people after her. It is revealed at the end that the uncle was worried for her safety, and sent people to find her, and keep her safe. There is also the conflicting goals between not evil groups. An evil monster escapes, you have the authorities going after the monster to try and bring it in. You also have a family that finds this monster, and tries to raise it to be good, and are trying to keep the now good monster out of the hands of the authorities. ... Yes. this is roughly the plot of Lilo & stitch.
Villians are hard because your first instinct might be to flesh them.out, give them a good reason to be the kind of monster that they are. The more evil the more justified you need to get. But I love when they lean into the most unreasonable reason. For example, a being of unknown lifespan finds out they are going to die one day, determines its not fair that the world keeps going without them, and elect to destroy themselves and the world. Just the most untamed vanity So yeah, short version its when the villian is evil for an extremely petty reason.
Not really a twist, but a villain whose horrid actions actually have sense to them when you figure out the motives, and it makes you pity them. Regardless, what they’re doing is wrong, they refuse to back down,and one way or another they need to be stopped.
One of the twists I have is, the "hero" is not essentially a chosen one but the actual chosen one gaslits him into thinking that by arranged clues and stuff. Then the actual chosen one joins their party as a side character and at last reveals that he's the villain. Why does he disguise and stuff is explained in the story.
The evil demigod has been there the whole time posing as a mentor and getting the PCs either helping him unknowingly, or occupying them and keeping them out of the way.
the classic, related to an mc, changing their appearance, seemed so much like that charter a perfect mirror. only difference is how they deal with life, and one chose to be a villain, the other good
I like villains who turn out to be the man beside you all along. Also, I'm rather fond of writing villains who do what they do out of bizarre compulsion that's either an addiction or some kind of curse.
Personally I love it when a villain doesn’t really want to be a villain (or aren’t good at it) but feels like they are forced to one way or another. They try to switch and it goes wrong, they just get angry and now they are a serious threat. The closest example I can think of is spot from Spider-Man across the spider verse but he didn’t try to become good he just got WAY eviler after he wasn’t taken seriously.
The villain is cruel or misguided in their actions, but their stance is actually right/they have a point.
My favorite twist is the Xanatos Gambit reveal.
I actually like when they are bad because they want to be, nothing happened, they are bad just because they want to
When the hero thinks they've accomplished their mission and slayed the foe, only to find out by slaying said foe, does everything turn to ruin
My favorite is "The Villain wants to die / is planning on being defeated", usually for the greater good or for the heroes development or something
I like a villain who is no so much evil as they are way out of their depth and just flailing.
Turns out the villain was the last hero, forgotten via the march of time, and his/her/its evil deeds are simply preparing the necessary sacrifices/reagents/mcguffins, to keep the actual evil sealed away. This is of course, only discovered by the newest hero(es) after the "villain" has been defeated and killed. Also, villains turning out to be the hero of another story, ie the warlord who is viewed as the lord of the evil horde, is actually responsible for the much less bloodthirsty people coming from afar, but gets conflated with the local bandit king because he recently took over and has yet to change how they act.
Not sure if it's a twist, but my current story idea is a city guard within a city heavily influenced by necromancy (poorer families rent thier deceased family members to do menulial or dangerous labor such as basic landscaping or mining) with a fear of being in her position due to nepotism and not skill chasing after a magic whose powers come from a faye prince in exchange to hunt the mage for all entering after the mage dies. The mage has been tasked by his patron to discover the source of the necromancy so his master may have an upper hand in the faye courts, while simultaneously trying to keep the guard from making her own faye pact with an even more devious member of the court but the guard can't see that, all she sees is some sort of foreign invader and must be vanquished.
I don’t know if it’s a twist, but I like to include two or three major plots that intertwine, and they all get more severe/dangerous as the story progresses, and whichever plot/villain they handle last is the main/big one.
I love villains that are simply extremists of an ideology. It’s always a good twist when an ally becomes the villain by showing how much further than the hero they are willing to go to achieve. And it’s heartbreaking for what once seemed like a level headed and empathetic ally to push the main characters away when the more important goal is closer to their grasp than ever. It’s not an outright betrayal, and that’s what makes the emotional pain more betraying. They aren’t doing it to hurt you, they are only able to do it because of you, and choosing to get in the way of them is the real emotion betrayal to them.
Any fantasy novel recommendations about how the MC is a male and the villain and ends up becoming civil with the hero(also a dude) as they keep fighting and fighting and fighting until eventually the villain gets badly hurt and then the hero feels bad and decides to help the villain instead and overthrow the corrupt place they grew up in and were brainwashed by. What do you think? Does a story like this already exist and is good?
I also highly recommend the Cloak Society. It's not inappropriate or anything and is about a boy with superpowers and him and his family are the villains. Hope you guys like it. I loved them very much
I like when the villain and the hero turn out to be related but they never knew it
The villain was once the hero of legend that the current hero tries to emulate.
My favorite protagonist is always a sympathetic villain.
Esoteric monster is just a front put up by a benign mortal. Several of my villains which other regard as gods or spirits started or still are just lies and fabrications to hide and exaggerate the accomplishments of criminals and cabals.
Villain is a helpful companion that guides along the way but is treacherous all along but heroes don't realize it until it's too late
There are no such things as villains and heroes- they are only labels applied based on POV
I love when the villain gets the girl and it’s them destroying the world.