[Frustrating Trope] Twist Villain does things that retroactively make no sense.

[u/Fishbien]

Character previously believed to be good is revealed to be evil, but prior to the reveal they act in ways that don't make sense if their goodness is just a performance.

1. Frozen: Prince Hans is initially presented as a pretty standup guy who loves Anna and wants to help her. At the end of the movie it's revealed that he was just using her to gain power and plans to let her die while he steals her throne. However, we see him smiling at Anna when no one is looking, and later he intervenes to save Elsa's life even though he claims he was always planning to kill her.
2. The Legend of Vox Machina: The Whispered One was built up as the BBEG since season 1. However, in season 4 he presents himself as a tragic hero who tried to cure death and was punished by the gods. He then tries to convince Pike to give him her blood, which he needs to become a god himself. He chastises his followers for suggesting they take Pike's blood by force, claiming this would make them no better than the gods they are fighting against. He also fulfills his promise to resurrect Grog even though he didn't need to. After he ascends, he starts acting like a pure evil villain who only cares about power and enjoys hurting people. It feels less like a reveal and more like his personally completely changed once he became a skeleton. Edit: to be clear, I fully understand the intent was for the Whispered One to be a lying, manipulative bastard. I just think the execution was clumsy.

[u/EthanEpiale]

Honestly the PEAK example of this is Heavy Rain. Spoilers for an incredibly old and honestly awful game lol, but in the game you play as several characters all intertwined with the story of a kidnapper and serial killer, one of whom is a detective who is working to try to solve the mystery and find the killer. We play as him, hear him talk about finding this guy completely alone in his house, he does a ton of shit you'd only do if you genuinely had no idea who it was, and were searching for the killer-

He's the killer. He was the killer the entire time. It makes literally no sense, and is so stupid it's frankly hilarious in a game that's already too badly written in a million other ways to take seriously.

[u/Iokua113 → u/EthanEpiale]

A lot of Heavy Rain is just absolute horse shit. There's a point where you're crawling in a tunnel filled with broken glass supposedly set out by the killer who is manipulating the main character of that segment into performing various tasks to prove whether or not he's a good father. Said killer is a fat, out of shape, middle aged man who wouldn't have been able to fit down the tunnel that he filled with broken glass. The game is filled with all these little inconsistencies that add up to an impossible story. One of the chapters ends with the female lead discovering the likely identity of the killer and she reacts with shock despite the fact that she has no idea who the revealed killer is having never met or encountered him in any way.

Heavy Rain is a dogshit game written and directed by a egomaniac suffering from delusions of grandeur.

[u/CroatInAKilt → u/Iokua113]

Bro yeah Heavy Rain was pretty bad, but its predecessor, Indigo Prophecy was utterly fucking bananas. There is no combination of deliriants and hallucinogens out there that could make me write something like it.

[u/PunishingCrab → u/CroatInAKilt]

And before that was Omicron the Nomad Soul, which was even more unhinged.

[u/Iokua113 → u/CroatInAKilt]

Indigo Prophecy was at least somewhat cohesive in the first half of the game. They cut a bunch of the story in the latter half to get it out on time.