10 Horror TV Shows Where The Hero Became The Villain

Norman Bates begins Bates Motel the show as a shy, awkward boy. While exhibiting the early signs of the psychological trauma that would unravel in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Norman is initially presented as a sensitive young man that audiences can get behind - his troubled upbringing and co-dependent relationship with his mother, Norma, make him an exceedingly sympathetic character.

Tragically, as the show unfolds, it soon becomes clear that Norman - dealing with Dissociative Identity Disorder - has a menacing alter-ego, that takes the form of his mother and causes him to "black out". Under "Mother's" influence, Norman steadily loses his grip on reality, committing a series of violent acts and gruesome murders - murders that eventually include Norma herself, although Marion Crane escapes this time around.

While you'd have had to have been living under a rock to not know where his storyline was ultimately going, Norman's slide into unhinged villainy highlights the capacity for darkness in the unlikeliest of individuals. Had you been introduced to him without knowledge of the original Pyscho's canon, it would have been incredibly easy to mistake this troubled young man for the hero of Bates Motel.