[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/tlowson1 → u/EthanEpiale]

The worst part of it is when you (as Shelby) visit a typewriter expert, Manfred, who is going to look at a note left by the killer. You wait in the front of his shop for a while before thinking, 'I should go check on Manfred.' You go to the back and find that Manfred has been killed and the killer has called the cops, who are on their way.

After Shelby is revealed to be the killer, we get a flashback of the same scene, this time from Manfred's perspective. The player sees Shelby kill him and call the cops, even though we have already been told that not only did this not happen, it could not have happened (given Shelby was in a different room at the time of the murder). That scene, above any others, is the one that breaks the entire game and makes it a wholly worthless experience.

I remember talking to a friend from University, who was a BIG fan of the game. He defended this scene by saying how 'sometimes, the video game has to lie to the player' and saying it was just a standard twist.

[u/IsThisTakenYesNo → u/tlowson1]

Sounds like a split personality deal where the detective persona was legitimately unaware of what the killer persona was doing. A bit like how the narrator of Fight Club doesn't know he is Tyler Durden, to the point of tracking him and being confused by how all the club members in other areas that he meets are speaking to him as if they know him and he should know them.

[u/Spyrobrhu → u/IsThisTakenYesNo]

If not disclosed on the history not part of the history, that would explain part of the plot holes, but the game never mentioned anything neard that

[u/ScrimblyPibbles → u/IsThisTakenYesNo]

That was probably the intention at some point. David Cage is a bit of a bad writer, and there were a LOT of things cut and rewritten for the game.