Sex–Face Turn - TV Tropes

"She wasn't enough to turn you, eh? Were you enough to turn her?"

• Okiku from Afro Samurai. It helps that she and Afro were Childhood Friends.
• Used as a gag ^note  in the third episode of Fuuun Ishin Dai Shogun: Houkoin's minion/sex slave Tsubaki is sent to keep Kirikou at bay from the main fight, so that the protagonist will be unable to fully use his Onigami. Kirino defeats her by using a ninja-technique to grope her into an orgasm and later pretty much feels her up to interrogate her. At the end of the episode, as Kirino is walking away, a blushing Tsubaki can be seen behind a tree, glaring adoringly at her.
• This is subverted/played around with in GUN×SWORD. Michael Garret performs a Face–Heel Turn and got along well with Fasalina. Eventually at one point, Fasalina opts to have sex with Michael, and while they still do not make their Heel–Face Turn officially, that event was a turning point that they do love each other and have other important thing between each other aside of serving The Claw. In the ending, it almost looked like they could stop being evil, until their relationship came to a rather rocky end. However, this granted them enough sympathy points that in Super Robot Wars K, they survive that event and finally perform their Heel–Face Turn there (provided that certain steps are taken).
• In the h-manga anthology How to Conquer Monster Girls, the first three chapters are dedicated to the story "Omnivore Hero," which shows The Hero, accompanied by his Sidekick (who has a crush on him) going on a quest to defeat the Demon Lord. The first two chapters mention that the Hero has such an Extreme Libido that human women were not enough to satisfy him, so he started going after monster women, and during his quest, while he slew the male monsters that were sent after him, the numerous female monster-assassins that were hired to kill him and monster-tribe leaders allied to the Demon Lord, he offered them the chance to have sex with him in exchange for sparing their lives or forming an alliance with him. The second chapter ends with the Hero having bested in bed the Demon Lord's most powerful underlings, and is disappointed to find out the Demon Lord is a male, and thus can't fornicate his way to victory. The third chapter begins with peace being restored to the realm after the Demon Lord surrendered right before the Final Battle at the sight of all his former allies siding with the Hero. Since the Hero couldn't just go out an seduce monster girls anymore, as they were banished to their respective realms, the Sidekick's mentor told her that he's becoming extremely sexually frustrated, and if his lust isn't satiated, he could become corrupted and become the new Demon Lord. To prevent that from happening, the mentor tells the Sidekick she has to satisfy the Hero's sexual urges, and they spend Their First Time together, where after several passionate romps, they confess their feelings for each other. The Distant Finale shows them married and with a daughter that they just put to bed, right before they go back to their bedchamber to start doing it again.
• Subverted in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Polnareff gets the idea of making Jotaro seduce Midler into sparing them after the woman in question admits having a Villainous Crush. Unfortunately, while a Chick Magnet he may be, Jotaro has No Social Skills and is even worse with romance.
• Maria no Danzai: When Shikimi sends her badger game partner Iijima to beat up Maria for telling her she would end up alone and calling her pitiful at school, Maria is forced to improvise her way out of the situation by french kissing Iijima while he's distracted, then taking him to a foreclosed love hotel where they undergo a BDSM session (with Iijima as the sub, by the way). It sways Iijima long enough that Maria convinces him to turn against Shikimi when she needs him the most by using a fake Twitter account.
• Satan becomes an angel again after being "purified" by Michael in My Balls, complete with The Immodest Orgasm and a Pillar of Light. It's that kind of series.
• In the h-manga, My Sex-Crazed Life With the Insatiable Demon Queen, a young man is transported into another world, to become The Hero that defeats the Demon Queen who offers him the chance to join forces and dominate the realm alongside her in their Final Battle, but he and his traveling party vanquishes her, as she swears she'll see him again. Back at the royal palace, the princess and the Hero says their goodbyes, as he was only there to defeat the Demon Queen, although the princess swears she'll find a way to summon him back so they can finally be together. Back in his world, the young man refuses his friend's offers to hook him up, saying he already likes someone else, and when he answers the door one day, he's surprised to see the Demon Queen, who tells him that her offer to join forces meant she wanted to bear his child, who would be the most powerful being in existence and she uses her magic powers to force herself on him. However, after living together for some time, the Demon Queen comments that instead of trying to Take Over the World, she should just open a restaurant when she learned to cook using modern appliances, and she and the young man become a loving couple. Meanwhile, in the other realm, the princess tells her head mage that enough time has passed and preparations are ready for her to lead an invasion into the hero's world, kill the Demon Queen, and "rescue" her beloved Hero. The ending narrating text is a journal entry written by the head mage, which mentions that the princess' actions led to an inter-dimensional war that devasted both worlds for generations.
• In YuYu Hakusho, after a female human doctor healed the demon Raizen, he intended to devour her. She calmly retorted that her body was saturated with deadly poisons she had ingested to produce primitive vaccines in her own blood, enough that even a demon would be killed. Raizen, mesmerized by her fearlessness made love with her and departed the next morning. Having spent his life killing, Raizen felt unworthy of her and refused to eat humans from that day on, even after her Death by Childbirth, starving to death over several centuries while hoping he would meet her reincarnation.

• The original, 1940s Golden Age Airboy series. Kissing the titular protagonist didn't turn Valkyrie, a Nazi air ace, against her superiors - finding out that her subordinates were about to be executed did. Unfortunately, many fans of the later 1980s incarnation of the series didn't have an opportunity to read the original stories, so they assumed that this was an example of the trope.
• Gender-flipped in Ultimate X-Men (2001), in which Wolverine is sent by the Brotherhood of Mutants to infiltrate the X-Men and assassinate Xavier, but defects for real after entering a sexual relationship with Jean Grey. She is not happy when she finds out.

• Gender inverted in Undocumented Features: Symphony of the Sword, where Brainwashed and Crazy Saiyonji is redeemed by Azalynn having sex with him. Of course, for her, it's a religious ritual, and was also accompanied by talking him out of his craziness.
• In the Death Note Slash Fic A Cure for Love once Light becomes Kira again he's much more reluctant to kill L now that they've been sleeping together.
• The Harry Potter fic "Apex Predator" features Harry becoming a target of various Veela women after the Delacours determine that Harry has a particularly potent sexuality that makes it easy for him to impregnate Veela when he's only a teenager (normally it requires considerable effort for a Veela to get pregnant). When the ruthless Veela queen Rin has her daughter Hiroko abduct Harry, Harry is quickly able to essentially seduce Hiroko to help him as his potent sexuality sabotages the charms Rin used to essentially enslave her daughters and other Veela, albeit transferring Hiroko's loyalty to Harry rather than actually breaking the charms as he had hoped.
• Likewise in Fever Dreams, after having sex with L, Light decides he doesn't want to kill him and so he has to quickly rethink his strategy in order to negate the traps he'd set and cover his (and Misa's) tracks.
• Subverted in the Kung Fu Panda fanfic The Vow: after Lord Shen forgives his former fiancée Lady Lianne of the betrayal she never did thirty years earlier, they rekindle their love and copulate. However, Shen stays true to his canon goals, telling to the shocked Lianne that nothing else than their relationship has changed. However, after he marries and subsequently releases her, he cheats death and is forced to live as his wife's secret prisoner, but still with her and their son.

• Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Ivonna Humpalot and Austin Powers.
• A major reason for Jake going native in Avatar is the fact that he's boinking a very hot alien chick. The Colonel even calls him out on it.

  Quaritch: "So, what, you find yourself some local tail... and then you completely forget what team you're on?"

• Lili Von Shtupp from Blazing Saddles pulls this after being surprised and overjoyed at how big the black Sheriff Bart turns out to be. "It's twue, it's twue!" Had the censors and / or executives not objected, this was to have been played with for parody; Bart's next line after this was to have been to politely point out that Lili was, in fact, sucking on his elbow. ...which is very interesting, because as written it subverts and mocks the stereotype, but as played it reinforces it, making it more bigoted—showing where the executives' priorities were.
• A Gender Flipped version occurs in The Crimson Pirate, with Vallo (the title character) agreeing to kidnap rebel leader El Libre and sell him to British authorities, until he falls in love with El Libre's daughter Consuelo.
• The James Bond franchise might as well be the epitome of this trope, as most of the female antagonists shown in the franchise end up turning good after making out with 007. Examples include:
  • Tatiana Romanova in From Russia with Love. She is assigned to seduce Bond in the first place as part of a Honey Trap but really falls in love with him after she is successful.
  • Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, which is a turn in more ways than one; it's implied in the film that Ms. Galore is a lesbian before her encounter with Bond (that's explicitly the case in Ian Fleming's novel). This is one of the less convincing versions, so it's likely this was why the trope was averted in the following movie:
  • Lampshaded and mocked spectacularly in Thunderball by nasty girl Fiona:

    [she steps on Bond's foot]

    Fiona: ... but not this one!

    • Bond lampshades it himself immediately before this:
  • Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever is an ambiguous case. She's openly impressed with Bond but she's also playing the odds of which side is likely to win.
  • Live and Let Die. Solitaire switches sides after Bond sleeps with her, but it was clear she held at least some grudge against Kananga already, sending Bond a covert warning that a fellow agent was treacherous. When Bond tells Solitaire that he stacked the deck of cards predicting they would become lovers, she's neither upset nor surprised.
  • Averted in A View to a Kill. Bond does sleep with Zorin's main henchwoman (and lover) May Day, but when she eventually turns against her boss, it's because Zorin knowingly left her to her death, not because she's smitten with Bond's manly ways. In fact, May Day could be said to be manlier than Bond himself.
  • Averted in Die Another Day, in which Miranda Frost has sex with Bond to distract him so that she can convince him she is still on his side and sabotage his gun.
• This trope provides the background for Le Nom Des Gens, in which the left-wing Bahia sleeps with right-wing leaders to win them over to her causes.
• Played with in North By Northwest. Eve clearly falls in love with protagonist Roger when she is ordered to seduce him by her boyfriend Vandamm, but shows no sign of actually leaving Vandamm for him. Then it turns out she's actually The Mole for the federal government and is staying with Vandamm so she can keep providing information for them, subverting the trope entirely.
• Downplayed in Our Man Flint. Gila is accused of this by the leaders of Galaxy after Flint escapes the Death Trap she lured him into after sleeping with him, but she actually changes sides because they're going to brainwash her into a Galaxy Sex Slave for her failure. Playing along with this trope however, Gilia throws herself into Flint's arms before being dragged off and slips him his Shoe Phone gadget so he can escape and rescue her. At the end of the movie she's joined Flint's harem, so he certainly left an impression.
• In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, the same effect is achieved not by the antagonistic woman actually seducing Clouseau, but by having her sleep with someone she thought was him when it was in fact another member of the same multi-national Carnival of Killers as her. This leaves Clouseau very confused when she suddenly appears naked in his bed professing her undying love for him.
• Revenge of the Nerds: Betty is more of the Alpha Bitch than an actual enemy, but she IS the Alpha Beta leader's girlfriend until Lewis Skolnick covertly has sex with (i.e. rapes) her in the Moon Room during the Carnival.

  Lewis: Jocks only think about sports. We [nerds] only think about sex.

• Averted with Loretta in The Sting. She sleeps with Johnny Hooker because she's the hitman "Salino" who's been hired to kill him. Somewhat played with because the character the audience thinks is the hitman is actually a bodyguard hired by Gondorff for Johnny's protection. It doesn't hurt that up until the very last second, the audience thinks that the only person who would help Johnny has just been shot by the 'man' gunning for him.
• Achilles in Troy with Briseis. He gains a heart and purpose from there on.
• Undercover Brother. White She Devil and the title character.
• Sorsha from Willow with Madmartigan.

• In Dragon Bones, nobleman Garranon sleeps with the king, and does get to keep his lands, even though his part of the country was involved in a revolution, and most other nobles whose parents were involved in the rebellion got their land taken away. However, in an subversion, the king is just as much of a greedy bastard as ever, and doesn't even dream of giving independence to Garranon's homeland. Even though trying to invoke this trope is the only reason why Garranon consents to have sex with him in the first place.
• Used in The Epic of Gilgamesh, making this Older Than Dirt. (Except in this case, it's less "Good vs. Evil" and more "Order vs. Chaos.") Enkidu starts off as a wild man, and then he has sex with Shamhat, a temple prostitute over the course of a week^note . By the end of the week, he is civilized. (It's not clear whether this was a direct result of the sex, or whether Shamhat used sex as a reward for appropriate behavior, thus "training" Enkidu.)
• Happens to half the women Golan Trevize meets in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, two examples being Hiroko in Alpha Centauri and the transport minister in Comporellon.
• This occurs at least twice in the Incarnations of Immortality series. Incidentally, the series also includes a Sex Heel Turn. However, the Go Seduce My Archnemesis plan worked a little too well, and the newly minted Anti-Villain comes out on top of the ensuing Evil Versus Evil struggle.^note 
• Tahiri Veila in Legacy of the Force. Subverted in that she doesn't actually have sex with Ben. Oh, and Ben's 14 and she's 28, making this an example of Squick. Of course, much Fanon says his father did the same to his mother, making this trope (and just about everything else a Skywalker does) In the Blood. Also subverted, in that instead of the 'sex face turn' working, he converts her later on.
• In Kushiel's Dart two different characters Quincel de Mortbahn and Eamonn of the Dalrida serve as major obstacles to Phèdre's quest to journey to Alba and help Drustan regain his throne so he can bring aid to Ysandre and are persuaded to become more helpful with the promise of a night with Phèdre. In the sequel, Kushiel's Chosen, we have Severio Stregazza, who's a complete Jerkass and generally unpleasant to everyone at court—again, until he becomes Phèdre's first patron, at which point he becomes a pleasant, kind, and helpful ally.
• An Invoked Trope in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Androids have been seducing the bounty hunters hunting them to create empathy and thus a reluctance to kill them.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, this is a tenet of the Matriology religion, and the source of one of their largest disputes with Lightseekers. Daylen takes the opportunity to make some quips about the Martian "Cleansing Ordinance" when he's in Frey, among the Martians.
• InCryptid: Dominic's Belligerent Sexual Tension with Verity leads to them hooking up, after which he starts questioning his Covenant beliefs and seeing cryptids as people. He ends up Defecting for Love after the Covenant kidnaps Verity.
  • The Healy Family have a history of achieving this, Thomas Price was originally a Covenant member before meeting Verity's grandmother Alice.

• Kind of played with in Angel at the end of Season 3, where Lilah tries to recruit the abandoned Wesley, even claiming he shouldn't pretend he is too good to work for Wolfram & Hart since he betrayed Team Angel. They end up having sex and develop very quirky feelings for each other, even to the degree of relationship-like behaviour. Well, she was rather turned Face than Wesley Heel. What are the odds ...
  • On Buffy, the opposite happened. Angel literally lost his soul and turned evil when he had sex with Buffy, because of a moment of true happiness. Granted, he was kinda cursed to that fate. Spike plays the trope straight-ish, though.
• Season 1 of Battlestar Galactica has Caprica-Sharon pulling one of these after a night with Helo. Ironically, Boomer's sex with Helo, in season 4, only sets up her Moral Event Horizon. A meta-subversion of this trope occurs in the opening moments of the Season 3 premiere: Ellen Tigh is seen sleeping with Cavil, to release Saul Tigh from Detention. Subversion because Cavil ain't one of the good guys and meta because while we can presume this is not her first selfless act, it is the first one the audience sees, and so serves as an inadvertent representation of our increased sympathy for her.
• Cole Turner of Charmed (1998) is a half-human demon sent to bring the Charmed Ones down by posing as a boyfriend of Phoebe's. Naturally, he begins to fall in love with her for real, and is therefore conflicted about his mission. While he initially hides from his feelings, Phoebe pursues him and they share a passionate night together. It's after that that Cole's Heel–Face Turn properly begins.
• Daredevil: In the midst of learning about Matt's nighttime activities, Foggy has a one-night stand with ex-girlfriend Marci Stahl. By the end of the season 1 finale, Foggy reminds Marci of what he said to her in her first episode that "she used to have a soul," and convinces her to help Nelson & Murdock dismantle Wilson Fisk's organization. Subsequently, Foggy and Marci's relationship rebuilds itself. They are both working at Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz by the end of season 2, they are back to full-time dating by the start of TheDefenders, and by Daredevil season 3, they are shown to be living together and considering marriage.
• Game of Thrones. Wildling girl Ygritte works out that Jon Snow is a Fake Defector, but hopes to turn him to their side via this trope. It sort of works, although Ygritte gets killed: Jon doesn't leave the Watch but he does become an advocate for them. To the point of being assassinated for his advocacy. Also, the only time he is ever shown lying is to save Mance Rayder and his remaining followers from execution by Stannis Baratheon. Though the Heel–Face Turn isn't so much on the part of Jon as it is on the part of the other Watch members: notably Samwell Tarly. Jon already respected the wildlings, it was the other Watch members who treated them badly. Also, Ygritte misreads his awkwardness as meaning he's a virgin. Actually, it's because he has some hang-ups about sex due to being a bastard. when they get to a nice warm spot, she starts to tease him with her catchphrase "you know nothing Jon Snow" while disrobing, only to be interrupted as he proves that this the one thing he does know about.^note 
• Nearly happened in season four of Gossip Girl. Juliet's main goal is to destroy Serena, but begins to turn away from that plan after she jumps into bed with Nate. Then Vanessa convinces her to go back to the dark side.
• On Hercules: The Legendary Journeys however, everyone the Hercster slept with went from unpleasant or downright evil to virtuous and demure. His strength was apparently not his only divine ability.
• Averted in season 3 of Heroes. The viewers are led to believe this is going to happen when it looks like Sylar is falling for Elle. (Admittedly, Elle isn't exactly a shining paragon of White Morality, but any influence she can have at this point can't help but be for the better.) They end up on a beach alone at night, and just as Elle and the viewers think he's going to tell her how she saved him and they're going to sleep together... Sylar whispers that they're both "damaged goods" and can never change, and then he brutally murders her.
• House, the season 6 premiere. Kind of. He's still a sociopath afterward, but at least he's not a crazy sociopath.
• On an episode of Wings, after Brian reports the improbable-but-true circumstances of his house burning down, a tough insurance inspector arrives to investigate him for fraud. She mercilessly builds her case against Brian, refusing to even consider his innocence... until she and Antonio have a wild passionate hook-up, and in the course of doing so accidentally start a fire that's comedically similar to the circumstances around Brian's house fire. The episode ends with the inspector unceremoniously dropping the case.
• Cruelly subverted in American Gothic (1995), in which Dr. Billy's attempt to seduce Lucas's girlfriend Selena to the path of good ends up with her trying to kill Lucas for entirely selfish reasons and framing Billy for it. This was the result of Writer Revolt on the part of the entire writing team, who had been forced to create Billy by Executive Meddling demands for a conventionally macho hero to be introduced, and took it out on the character.

• In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu starts off as wild and uncivilized, but then has sex with a temple prostitute named Shamhat over the course of a week. (Perhaps she was using sex as a reward for desirable behavior on Enkidu's part?) By the end of the week, Enkidu is civilized, and no longer roams around with animal companions in the forest, but rather befriends Gilgamesh. Enkidu does blame Shamhat for his death and curses her, however, because if it weren't for her, he would have remained a wild man and not gotten caught up in all the messes he and Gilgamesh did. The sun god reminds him that he wouldn't have befriended Gilgamesh if it wasn't for her, though, so Enkidu takes back the curse he put on her.

• Beulah McGillicutty turned face in ECW after sleeping with Tommy Dreamer
• The Lovely Lacey gradually turned face in Ring of Honor after sleeping with Austin Aries

• Can be done in Liberal Crime Squad: high seduction can convert CIA agents, and even the corporate CEO.
• Eva had simple orders in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: seduce Naked Snake, steal the Philosopher's Legacy from him, and kill him. In the end, she does steal the Legacy, but leaves him alive with a recording explaining her involvement, and her connection to The Boss. They meet again with much plot relevance before Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Possibly subverted when Eva claims that it wasn't her feelings for Snake that stopped her from killing him, but the respect she had for the Boss, who made Eva promise she would let him live.
• Possibly gender inverted in the Neverwinter Nights mod A Dance with Rogues, where having sex with Vico in the second chapter leads you down a path in which he is a somewhat nicer person than your other options in that scene. Played straight in The Bastard of Kosigan, in the first module with the female mercenary in the forest north of Cologne. Having sex with her is an optional part of her Heel–Face Turn, though.
• Early in Sengoku Rance, Suzume is dispatched by Inukai of Iga to seduce and kill Rance. She chooses to defect to Oda after having sex with him. Since when is Rance a good guy? When the plot calls for it. Relatively speaking.

• The Evil Overlord List, #19. Stick to the list and you shall succeed.
• Leather from Interviewing Leather, has some really nasty things to say about "heroes" who think they can redeem a supervillainess by sleeping with her.